John Moag may have an impossible task to complete. Moag is National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern's point man in the negotiations to get the Sacramento Kings owners a new arena in the California capital. His job was made much more difficult last week when a Sacramento grand jury, who was charged with reviewing the last round of negotiations between the Kings owners, the Maloof Brothers, and city and county officials in their attempts to come up with a funding plan for a new arena.
The Maloofs walked away from a deal but city and county officials put an arena initiative on the ballot anyway. The referendum actually consisted of two questions asking for arena funding. The voters trounced both proposals. The Maloofs turned the arena funding process over to the NBA which recruited Moag, the man responsible for putting together a state of Maryland funding proposal for a new Baltimore football stadium that eventually in the fall of 1995 enticed Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell into moving his National Football League franchise to Maryland's biggest city.
Moag had an easy time getting public money from Maryland officials who wanted to get Baltimore back into the NFL and were willing to pay a multi-million dollar annual price tag for an NFL team. Sacramento city and county leaders are apparently ready to spend at least a half billion dollars to continue to be part of major league sports, but the local population isn't. That was Moag's basic problem until a grand jury looked into the negotiations between the Maloofs and Sacramento's political leaders.
The grand jury was just looking into the negotiations and was required to release its findings. Moag, Stern, the Maloofs and Sacramento officials cannot be pleased with one particular sentence in the report which accused "city and county leaders of deceiving the public in their quest to build a Kings arena with tax dollars."
That is an inflammatory statement and cannot help the Maloofs quest for a new arena. But the question is why does Sacramento or any other city for that matter want to invest in a proven money-losing proposition, a stadium or an arena? It's a constant battle that goes on in United States cities with no real answers.
Stadiums/arenas don't drive a city or a county's economy. Stadiums and arenas create low paying, and in many cases per diem jobs and now the way stadiums and arenas are being built, owners have mall like facilities inside the venues and certainly don't want outside competition when they have become restaurateurs and clothiers inside the stadium or arena.
The Maloofs wanted a new arena complete with in-arena restaurants and stores along with naming rights and a huge parking lot. Sacramento officials wanted to create an arena village in the parking lot. The Maloofs wanted the lot because it is a moneymaker for them and in small market Sacramento where TV monies are limited and corporate support is limited, a perk like a big parking lot is extremely important.
Moag has been touring Sacramento trying to get support for arena funding but is meeting opposition. California is now a tough place to do business for sports owners. There is more support to spend local money for a football stadium in Los Angeles, Anaheim or Pasadena and the likelihood of the NFL returning to the Los Angeles area in the next five years is slim. San Diego will not build Alex Spanos a new stadium for his Chargers forcing the Spanos family to look at proposals from three areas in the San Diego vicinity, Chula Vista, Oceanside and National City. The San Francisco 49ers ownership has settled on Santa Clara as its new home, but getting a public subsidy to help payoff the stadium debt from Santa Clara may be difficult.
Oakland A's owner Lewis Wolff has formed a partnership with Cisco System to build a new baseball park in Fremont, which is south of Oakland and not far from San Jose. Wolff wants to build a stadium-village complete with stores and housing. The plan is still in its formative stages.
None of the sports teams will be receiving a handout from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and California tax laws that cap tax increases may also hinder stadium and arena building spending.
Moag has his work cut out for him. Meanwhile, up the Pacific Coast in Seattle, Stern has another problem. Because of a 2006 referendum in which voters approved a law that limits municipal spending on arenas and other sports projects, Seattle officials can't spend public dollars for a new arena for the SuperSonics and the WNBA's Storm and the slope got a bit slippery for new owner Clayton Bennett's quest for $300 million in state funding in what was already an uphill battle for a multi-purpose building in Seattle's suburbs, mostly likely Renton. Two of Bennett's partners, Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon, have contributed heavily to Gary Bauer's group Americans United to Preserve Marriage, which contends that marriage is a union between a man and a woman.
That revelation may not help Bennett in Washington, particularly in the Seattle metro area, which has the United States second highest share of gay and lesbian adults. In 2006, the Seattle Storm hosted an Equal Rights Washington Day promotion, in support of a group that supports gay rights.
Bennett wants the Washington state houses to approve a deal by October 31 and really doesn't want the deal to go before voters in whatever area is designated as the future home of the Seattle SuperSonics and possibly an National Hockey League team. Arena proponents want the funding to come from a 1995 deal that the legislature cooked up that allowed Seattle to build a new baseball stadium for the American League Mariners after voters turned down a stadium proposal in a 1995 referendum. The legislature approved a hike in hotel and motel rooms, rental cars, bars and taverns restaurant taxes in King County and Governor Mike Lowry signed it into law. Arena backers want to extend the life of those tax hikes for the SuperSonics arena.
The Maloofs just recently extended its naming rights agreement with Atlantic Richfield for the Kings arena in Sacramento, so the franchise is staying in the California capital through next season at minimum. Bennett's lease in his arena, which was renovated with a large taxpayers subsidy in 1995, is done in 2010. Bennett is from Oklahoma and Oklahoma City will be an open market in 2007-08. Oklahoma City's business leaders have supported George Shinn's New Orleans Hornets franchise over the past two years and the NBA has some interest in putting a franchise in the Oklahoma city in the future based on the two years of business and political backing. Kansas City and Louisville could also be interested in NBA franchises.
Stern also has unhappy owners in Orlando and Milwaukee, the Magic's Rich DeVos has not been able to get a new building from Orlando officials and Milwaukee's Herb Kohl is looking for something else in Milwaukee. Stern's immediate problem though is on the west coast and finding a solution to the Kings and SuperSonics arena woes may not be easily attainable.
