Crew to Austin in 2019..(Maybe)

Good interview with Moreno

http://www.dispatch.com/sports/2018...s-time-with-crew-but-chafes-at-potential-move

 

"It’s difficult to ignore the fact of the interest of the fans and the history of the league and the roots of where this league comes from. Those things haven’t been taken into consideration the way that they should as factors in the bottom-line decisions and perhaps deceitful behavior and misleading information and when you’re making decisions with that in the backdrop, you can’t help but think it can’t lead to good things. When a fan base has been misled and when a community has been given information that has been incorrect, when the outreach programs in the community are not what they used to be and then you use that information to somehow make a case for the move, then obviously it’s very difficult to have any faith in the ownership group."

Suck on that truth bomb, Austin.

 

And by extension... If the league can do this here, they can do it anywhere. With that thought in the back of people's minds, how do you build customer loyalty for your product?

 

"It became necessary to destroy this village in order to save it...".

 

If they try to use that line of reasoning, it doesn't hold up. There has already been a ton of analysis done by Crew fans that proves the "business metrics" thing coming from Precourt and Garber is bs. The only thing this village needs saving from is those two clowns.

But of course, I'm sure they will try to use that line anyway.

 

I was being sarcastic. Older folks will remember where that line came from originally....

 

Let me also point out that the last time an MLS/Crew owner took on Columbus in court he got his ass handed to him and was required to pay a million dollars worth of Columbus people's legal bills.

Just saying;

 

Hah, in that case it went right over my head then

 

It would be pretty funny if the Modell law ended up allowing the state to force a sale of just the entity that actually owns the team, valued at whatever the market rate for a company losing eleventy billion dollars a year would be, while leaving PSV stuck with all these supposedly profitable shell companies that will become worthless as soon as the new owners decide to stop doing business with them.

 

Happens to us all at one time or another....

 

i read recently that in fact that quote was largely untrue, what there actually was was taken wildly out of context and was never meant to imply what everyone claimed at the time.

But as we all recall, truth was not large supply.

 

It would have been a great line in the Joseph Conrad story and used in the movie it was adapted to about the war that is was actually used in.

The horror...

 

If the council approves the new site would there need to be public opportunity for other investors to have a chance to buy the land? If the city offers the land at bellow market rates other developers could cry foul.

 

Fake news is nothing new, is it?

Heck even Solomon said "there is nothing new under the sun"....

We may have wildly unbelievable technology--but people haven't changed that much through the millennia.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bến_Tre#Vietnam_War

Keep in mind, this was about a month before My Lai.

 

Oh, so now it's Your Lai.... I see...

 

They strike me as being the second wife who says "he'd never do that to me", forgetting that he already did it once.

 

So the solution is to pay Austin $10 million for the property (never gonna happen), build an 8000 seat stadium (um....OK) run it for two years, sell out every game and prove thereby that soccer is big, big, big in Austin (he forgot the part about the gnomes and the underpants) and then, when Austin is madly in love with Tony Precourt, put Guerrero on the ballot; it sails right through and voila!.

What does this jackass drink, exactly? What a pile of rubbish.

 

My biggest 'concern' about the process is that the Austin stadium somehow falls through. MLS isn't going to approve a move without a permanent stadium. Its not like they are going to play in Yankee stadium until..... Yankee stadium seats 28k in world-class top MLB team comfort. MLS is going to want a stadium plan in place. The temporary stadium plan at McKalla that seats 8k in bleachers while they struggle to figure out a permanent plan won't work.

I am of the opinion that as long as the permanent location has not been decided upon, MLS has been out of this. They've left Precourt to his own devices WRT offers for purchase, where to move, etc. Once Precourt is out of Columbus, the league can get involved in Columbus again. Precourt sorting out Austin was a prerequisite for anything to happen in Columbus. Until he's out, he's it.

Precourt picking McKalla moves this one step closer to resolution. This whole process will drag out for another 3 to 6 months as Precourt negotiates terms of the incentives he gets in Austin. After that, Columbus can deal directly with MLS.

 

Is it this field where the 10 yd from corner marker was close to being inside the 18?

 

With McKalla being the place the terms become most important. Austin is in the hole for this piece of land. According to that first linked article (the only one not complete fantasy) from @hardhead they bought it for $1.4M, paid more than $4M to clean it up, spent more than $1M fighting the previous owner in court and then received a $3.6M settlement. So, more than $2.8M in the red based on those numbers.

The land has a value of at least $5.5M So, we could say that if they city just gave PSV the land free and clear that it would be an $8M gift. If that were the negotiated deal, as @Bill Archer has said many times, they'd be happy to do that for anyone. The property is sunk cost and if they give it to someone they immediately start collecting property taxes on the land (average TX property tax is 1.94%). Not a lot, but that's $106,700/year that they're not getting now.

PSV builds a $200M stadium on that land? Oh boy, now they can collect $4M/year in taxes! There's all incentive any government needs.

BUT! There is no way that will fly with PSV. I can't believe that just taking the land is all he would need to make this work. He'd need 10-20 year tax abatement, help with infrastructure, etc. He's got a sweetheart deal here in Columbus (why the Modell law applies). It costs them one game's worth of parking revenue to pay the rent for the year here.

Now we're going to see PSV spew out how much Austin has to gain with "facts and figures" showing big numbers. All in the hopes that they can grow that $8M gift by a factor of 10. Will Austin go for that? Not as easily as just gifting the trash piece of land that's been vacant for 20 years.

 

Even if one thought it was weak, IMHO, you still play your hand with the cards that are dealt, and force the other side to take the risk of losing. I think the tendency is to undervalue your own position, and overvalue the position of the forces aligned against you. You never know the full details of what internal pressures the other side may be under. Worst case, whatever settlement might be negotiated will be better off if there is at least some chance the other side could lose.

 

Based only on the whims of MLS. While it is unlikely they move prior to 2018, there is nothing stopping them.

 

Someone's late to the party. PSV is already talking 400mil in benefits. But you made it here and it's Crewsmas. May I make you a Manhattan?