A Mercury columnist has already criticized the idea, though: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/columnists/mark_purdy/13419699.htm
Holy crap. If this goes through, its a huge victory for MLS. Although if my tax money was going to this thing, I'd be pretty outraged.
This sounds good and all, but I'm with Footer on this one...there is no way in hell this passes with voters the way its laid out there.
What I find interesting was in the end, it was SVS&E's unwillingness to take the final leap that lead to the Earthquakes having to pull up shop and go to Houston. What in the world were they thinking? How big of an assurance do you need that the league isn't going to fold then all the concreate going down in every city around the league. The twist and turns this thing has taken over the last couple years is just amazing. When it's all said and done, with hopefully the new quakes in SJ, I can't wait to read the SSV tell all book.
I don't believe the political will to throw that kind of money around is really there. The most telling comment to me was Cortese's: "My guess is politically what's going on is there are some people willing to support that deal to make Earthquakes fans happy immediately, but this is never going to happen ... Those are bogus sources of money they're pointing to.''
This looks a lot like a poison pill proposition that will never get passed that provides political cover. Still, if it isn't, or if they find other sources of construction costs. Wow.
So? As the Guardian's "The Fiver" (a great source of inside information about the sporting press) would say, what power does a fat alcoholic with a laptop have over this?
I wonder. If MLS were to say you will definitely get your team back (well, an expansion one, but still the San Jose Earthquakes) if this goes through, I think that would be enough of a committment.
My thoughts exactly. Why plop down $80 mill when you already have/had a team. Coulld SJ have contructed a nice SSS for less than $80 mill?
Eliminating basically half the benefit of the stadium to the investor. The speculative revenue from non-MLS events is a counterbalance to the far more speculative revenues from the team itself. One can argue it's still attractive because the city covers more than half the front-end cost and shares risk and incentive to make it work. However, the following is evidence to the contrary:
You got to love Mark Purdy. So with all the arguments you can make about a publically subsidized stadium, and they are numerous, the only one he could come up with was...it's bad because it's for soccer????? Nice one from the quy who said AEG was just bluffing in the first place and that EQs could just go on for ever in Spartan stadium. On the other hand I could see other voters being as ignorant as he is about soccer. Which is why the mention of the A's owner as a potential investor is interesting. Let's say SJ want's the A's and I'd guess the A's want a new stadium too(which BB team doesn't), however, SJ isn't sure they have the votes from just BB fans. Now you throw in a soccer stadium into one bill to get soccer fans out to the polls and you might have something like what happened in Seattle with Seahawk Stadium.
Exactly. The guy had no understanding at all of what was going on, but he seems to be very quick to respond to Earthquakes items. If he has any sort of readership, it's worrying.
Why do they have go give $14 million in operating subsidies ? Couldn't they save that money and just start playing in a new stadium from the beginning ?
cause a bluff only works if once in a while you actually go through with it. Do you really think this would happen if they hadn't yanked the team?
wow this offer is a great offer if it had come earlier. So the SVE could not come to terms with this kind of deal or did the city offer this after seeing that they got screwed.
This does not seem like a real offer. It sounds like damage control for the politicians. They don't want to take the blame so they make it seem that it was somebody else's fault for turning down their generous (phantom) offer.