My friend, Don, did this awesome art for a lengthy and biting City Paper article about Chester’s soccer stadium. He here at LG have been early adopters of criticism concerning it on every level and we’re glad to see others are starting to see it for what it is.
The state legislature, though, resisted Rendell’s overtures, with some members arguing that building a soccer stadium with tax money was a bad investment. State Rep. Thaddeus Kirkland, who represents Chester, pointed out that Chester could use a grocery store more than it could a soccer stadium.
Around this time, the proposal changed. By September, The Team had begun to talk about the stadium as the mere "anchor" of a much larger project that would include retail, office and residential components — worth $300 million of investment in Chester. By January 2008, the project had grown more ambitious still: The investment figure had magically risen to $414 million, and The Team began dangling the ultimate prize: a supermarket.
The use of public money to build stadiums has become commonplace, despite evidence that taxpayers often don’t favor it, and despite a growing body of research by economists that says the stadiums are almost always — if not always — a bum deal.
At its core, we’re seeing Cargo Cult economics. Our Benevolent Overlords think that if they can make a Potemkin Village on a macro level with shiny buildings and enough bread and circuses, it will take root and magically become a viable community. Happy, obedient citizens will walk the streets (or take light rail) all hours of the day or night, stores will be full of shoppers swiping their plastic and dogs will cease to poop.
To you and I, this propped-up, subsidized economy is the definition of failure. However, to the ruling class, once the cardboard checks have been awarded and the booty divided amongst the unions, it is now time to don the flight suits and declare victory. Maybe they’re inhaling too much Viscose. Time to take the bars off the windows (if you are from around here, that last analogy would be really funny!).
Let me tell you something…the retail part will likely not be built. If it somehow is, they will have trouble getting / retaining tenants. I have seen case after case of this. Aside from TERRIBLE economic conditions, the environmental problems at the site could be insurmountable. Without a proper environmental assessment, there is simply no way to know how bad it could possibly be.
I worked on a remediation project in Glen Cove, NY a few years ago. On a rainy day I took a stroll to the town building department to look at the file for the property, an old dump that had been redeveloped without an adequate environmental assessment.
As I paged though the prodigious sheaf of bureaucratic paperwork, a sad, sad story began to emerge, the ending of which, of course, I already knew, a 3/4 built highrise condo complex demolished and crushed, and all the dirt to a depth of 20 feet hauled away.
This story looks an awful lot like that one.
And another thought. More often than not, this shifting of environmental liabilities onto quasi-governmental authorities, or bankruptable LLCs is a simple, shameless dodge around the “polluter pays” principle that our regulatory culture holds so dear.
In other words, if you don’t want to disgorge your profits, and want to unload your pollution liability, shuffle it off into an LLC, or better yet get a government agency to take it. Either way, you are off the hook.