As an NHL fan, Glendale has been top-of-mind for us over the last five years, and let me tell you, they might be the dumbest motherfuckers in America.
bigfan wrote:
And if the whole funding of stadiums thing is bad for your city, WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING IT?
THEY CAN'T HELP THEMSELVES. THEY'RE REALLY, REALLY STUPID. They've committed almost a quarter of a billion dollars to keep the Coyotes because they're afraid that if the Coyotes aren't there, it'll be hard to pay off the construction bonds on the arena. Now I'm not a real estate maven like you, but I can figure out that this math doesn't make any sense, not when you've paid your tenant $25MM the first two years and $15MM each year after that in order to finish paying off $220MM in bonds. And on top of all this, the NHL is happy to help them make these bad decisions because they like having a team or two that can't make a dime, because that throws the curve for everyone else and lowers the salary cap, and because if someone is offering you 25 million dollars to pay rent, you don't turn that down.
What seems to have happened in Glendale is that some ambitious developers in a time of ambitious development convinced a fringe-y working-class/middle-class exurb that they were going to become the new sports/entertainment capital of the Valley, notwithstanding the fact that most of the wealth and entertainment stuff is in Scottsdale or other points east of Phoenix. The developer behind that whole Westgate district went bankrupt, got out of the business, and left everyone else to clean up his mess after the economy went bad, and now you have a government of elected yokels and appointed hacks trying to double down on every stupid decision they've ever made, leading up to getting embarrassed with this Super Bowl.
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Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.