Yesterday I wrote that the City Council should not spend any more money on studying the San Francisco 49ers' stadium subsidy request until the City had a signed agreement from Cedar Fair.
I didn't really expect the City Council to postpone this request for additional money, but today's press release from Cedar Fair — "Cedar Fair opposes proposed 49ers stadium" — is precisely the reason why the City of Santa Clara should have obtained a signed agreement with Cedar Fair before spending a dime of taxpayer money on studying the proposal.
Cedar Fair's opposition isn't a complete roadblock to the stadium proposal — in its press release, Cedar Fair states its willingness to "consider selling the remainder of its lease and all of its interest and assets to the City or 49ers for fair market value" — but its opposition completely changes the circumstances of the proposal. If the City Council still wants to move forward with this proposal, it needs to study the feasibility in light of these new conditions.
The San Francisco 49ers, however, were quick to provide an alternative plan — they'll just buy the theme park.
A couple of problems with this new proposal.
First, as Santa Clara's Deputy City Manager Carol McCarthy told the San Jose Mercury News "Any sale requires the city's approval and is contingent on having a class A theme-park operator . . . with proven financial ability to operate it."
So, to use a baseball metaphor, strike one.
Second, the San Francisco 49ers have asked the city for $222,000,000 in public assets plus 15 acres of land to build the stadium. If they don't have the money to build their own stadium, how can they afford a theme park? And if we the taxpayers are subsidizing their place of business, is our subsidy helping them to acquire more business assets? Should public money be used to help a wealthy team owner buy even more private assets?
Strike two.
Finally, in many of their presentations to city residents, the 49ers have tried to claim that they want the City to operate the stadium because they "are in the football business, not the stadium business." (My previous responses to that claim have been "our city isn't in the stadium business either" and "that's a little like Intel saying its not in the office building business." Intel certainly isn't in the office building business, but it didn't use that argument to try and convince the city to build an office for them.)
But if the 49ers don't want to be in the stadium business, why on earth are they considering a leap into the theme park business? Shouldn't they stick a little closer to their core competencies?
I'll call that strike three.
Is this latest theme park idea just a last-minute desperation strategy? Are the 49ers merely clinging to any shred of hope that this proposal is viable? Do the San Francisco 49ers need to keep up the image that the Santa Clara plan is viable in order to put pressure on San Francisco to complete its proposal? Once the San Francisco proposal is in place, will the 49ers still be talking about venturing into the theme park business?
Time will certainly tell, but until then, be sure your seat belt is fastened and keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times.
It looks like it's going to be a wild ride.
UPDATE:
According to Julie Patel's article in the Mercury News today — Niners eye new spot for possible stadium — there may be another option. The proposed stadium site would be moved to an overflow parking on the other side of San Tomas Creek. But if they used this site, the 49ers would need to resubmit all of their site plans and traffic analysis, and the City would have to develop a plan to replace the parking Cedar Fair would be losing.
So this is yet another reason the City Council should have received Great America's approval in writing before spending any money even studying this proposal. As Ms. Patel writes in her article: "Whatever happens, the shifting debate is bound to cost the city of Santa Clara more time and money, on top of the $500,000 approved to research a stadium."
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5 comments:
I understand its a new site and it might take more money or time but you didn't put on the blog which was in the paper that most of the work can be transferred to the proposed new site and that staff aims to finish its study by the end of the year.
The exact words in the paper were that "much" of the work can be applied to the new site. Note quite the same as "most" in my book, but good to mention.
However, this new site will have different site requirements, different traffic patterns, and different impacts. Until all of that is worked out and the City knows exactly what plan it should study, it needs to hold off any further study.
What if these site issues take another 6-12 months to resolve? Or even longer? Economic conditions may change significantly in the interim, and the City's current study would be out of date.
Thanks for the catch on much, not most. You might be putting the cart before the horse. All the traffic and impacts will be studied during the environmental impact report. There still has to be this report, after the feasibility study is finished. And from what I've read these do take quite a long time. So even if the feasibility study is completed tomorrow, the EIR could determine the stadium will not work.
Actually, the 49ers presented a traffic impact plan in their report to the City Council on April 24. They also included anticipated site improvement requirements.
You're absolutely right that site and traffic impacts would be studied even more in depth during the EIR process, but it's clear that the 49ers need to have a basic plan for traffic and site improvements before the City Council can make a decision on the proposal.
And by shifting the focus to a new site, we're back to square one on those fronts.
REAL ESTATE RULE # 1.
Don't DREAM before negoaition.
REAL ESTATE RULE # 2
There must be SIGNED agreements of INTENT and UNDERSTANDING from all the concerned parties before any action takes place or money is spent!
This was not accomplished.
This basic problem STILL exists ...
Santa Clara City still does not have signed agreements of intent or there would not be all the uncertainty.
The city council so far has squandered $500K of public funds trying to justify dreams.
END RESULT . . .
Continued confusion !
49er's remain in San Francisco ! Recall of city council members ! Loss of more public funds !
Santa Clara remains parochial !
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