Transcript for the Piece Audio version of If You Build It, Then So What?
HOST INTRO: Yes, it’s December, but in Washington, DC these days, the only sports news is about baseball. Fifteen thousand people have signed up for seasons tickets to the latest incarnation of the wayward Montreal Expos. The Expos …. who split their home games last year between Montreal and Puerto Rico …. are now known as the Washington Nationals. This season they’ll play about 20 blocks from the U.S. Capitol. But that’s only for now. Come next year, the Nationals could be the Las Vegas Elvis Impersonators or Los Chipotles, de Monterrey in Mexico. Because right now, Washington doesn’t get to keep the team unless the city builds them a stadium. We all know what the owners of the team get out of all this. So the debate right now in Washington – and it’s also one going on in New York where they city’s trying to decide whether to pay 600 million dollars to help build a new home for the Jets in Manhattan – the debate is over what the taxpayers get. Richard Paul takes a look at whether sports stadiums really can hit a homerun for taxpayers.
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It’s sort of funny when you think about it …. The most hackneyed rationale you can think of for building a ball park is .. it turns out … actually the primary motivation when cities sit down to figure out whether they’re going to shell out for a stadium. You know what I’m talking about …
MOVIE CLIP – FIELD OF DREAMS
Voice: If you build it they will come.
If you build it they will come. Put in a stadium. People will show up, see the game, eat in the neighborhood, shop there, stay overnight in hotels, pay taxes on everything and we’ll clean up!
MOVIE CLIP – FIELD OF DREAMS
Voice: If you build it they will come.
Here’s the thing thought … it doesn’t work.
UTT: In the vast majority of cases there was very little or no effect whatsoever on the local economy.
That’s economist Ron Utt. He’s talking about a study that looked at 48 different cities that built stadiums from 1958 to 1989. Not only didn’t they improve things, he says in some cases it even got worse.
UTT: If you're spending 250 million or 750 million or a billion dollars on something, that means a whole bunch of other things that you're not doing. Look at Veterans' Stadium and the Spectrum in South Philadelphia or the new state-of-the art Gateway Center in Cleveland. The sponsors admitted that that created only half of the jobs that were promised.
Same thing in Atlanta, outside the Georgia Dome
UTT: Right next to the Georgia Dome is this 80 acre of tract that looks like Tobacco Road that has defied any kind of development, any kind of spin-off development from the Georgia Dome.
But what about those numbers showing that stadiums bring the state money – all that sales tax on tickets and hot dogs? Economists will tell you to look at it this way: If I spend $100 taking my wife to a nice dinner in the Napa Valley
SFX: wine glasses clink
Or we spend $100 watching the Giants at Pac Bell Park
SFX – ballpark and organ music
I’ve only still spent $100. The hundred dollars spent at the ballpark is not new money. I just spent it one place instead of another. We’re going through this whole discussion these days here in Washington, DC. We get the Washington Nationals, if Major League Baseball gets a new stadium that WE pay for. Washington is a place that has more professional activists, more advanced degrees and more lawyers than we have restaurants, traffic lights or gas stations. As a result, it’s practically impossible to get anything big built in this town. But the mayor’s trying. He wants the city to build a new stadium in really awful part of town and use baseball as the lever to bring in economic activity. The reaction so far?
NEWS REPORT – NEWS-CHANNEL 8
ANCHOR: Baseball’s return to The District still isn’t sitting well with some folks. One major issue is the proposal for a new stadium.
ANGRY MAN GIVING A SPEECH: Tell this mayor that his priorities are out of order.
ANCHOR: Critics say public money should go to schools and social services.
Turns out that guy’s in the majority. A survey by the Washington Post, shows 69% of the people in Washington DON’T want city funds spennt on a new baseball stadium. We Americans weren’t always like this.
SF FAIR TAPE
Today, politicians need to couch this kind of spending in terms of economic development, because no one will support tax dollars for entertainment. But it there WAS a time in America when people WERE willing to squander multiple millions in public money for the sake of a good time. Not for stadiums. Those were privately funded. I’m talking about World’s Fairs.
MOVIE CLIP – NEW YORK WORLDS FAIR
ANNOUNCER: Everyone is coming to the New York Worlds Fair. Coming from the four corners of the earth. And Five Corners, Idaho.
In 1939 in New York AND San Francisco, and then again in New York in 1964. they spent MILLIONS. And the purpose was never really clear. Here’s Robert Moses … the man who made New York City what it is today …. on the 1964 Fair.
REPORTER: What is the overall purpose of the new Fair?
MOSES: Well the overall stated purpose is education for brotherhood and brotherhood through education (up inflection) this has to be an educational institution to get a tax exemption.
MOVIE CLIP – SAN FRANCISCO WORLDS FAIR
ANNOUNCER: Between these two great bridges, in historic San Francisco Bay, is an inspiring tribute to the achievements of our time. The Golden Gate International Exposition on man-made Treasure Island.
The backers of the San Francisco Fair claimed the proceeds would fund a new airport. But the fair was a bust. In the 40s, they turned Treasure Island into a Navy Base. Maybe those were simpler times. You could argue that this was just a different era …. When people were a lot more willing to let rich men in charge tell them what was right and wrong. And if that’s the case, maybe we’re better off and shouldn’t be shedding tears over our lost innocence. Besides, crying wouldn’t be right in this case. You know why.
MOVIE CLIP – A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN
Tom Hanks: There’s no crying in baseball! There's no crying in baseball! No crying! (cross fade to music)
