Plans unveiled for $650M Red Wings arena, entertainment district in Detroit

[Bham1982]

Let me digress for a second and show the parallels to what happened in D.C. for Nationals Park.

There are no parallels between Detroit and DC. They couldn't have more different economic and land use norms.

In D.C. they developed a plan which had multiple funding sources to pay off the debt.

Yeah, they spent $700 million in taxpayer subsidies, primarily TIF and PILOT monies [[so basically property taxes).

The income from those sources EXCEEDED the debt service and now the business folks are complaining that D.C. is keeping the excess funds [[for the general fund) instead of paying off the debt early.

Which is fine, if true, but still means DC taxpayers paid $700 million for a baseball park, instead of, say $700 million on schools. The fact that the debt service is being paid off is nice, but doesn't affect the initial subsidy. The "excess funds" are the property taxes that would have been collected anyway if there were no stadium.

D.C. got a beautiful stadium [[to keep their Nats), tremendous amount of development around the stadium AND D.C. IS MAKING MONEY ON THE STADIUM [[+ cash flow - income > expenditures).

DC is not making money on the stadium. They're paying off the debt service. And the development has nothing to do with the stadium. All the office buildings were built in that area because of the massive expansion of the federal govt., which feeds office space needs in Central DC. If anything, a baseball park would be a hinderance to office development.

And money for schools: The taxes the business agreed to tax themselves was SOLELY for the stadium. NO stadium; NO Tax. and NO extra money for schools.

DC diverted $700 million in taxpayer dollars to the stadium, all of which could have been spent on something else, such as schools. Property taxes would obviously still be collected on all the new office buildings, even if there were no stadium. If anything, you would probably have more property tax revenue, because a prime space for offices wouldn't be wasted on a baseball field and accompanying parking.