Is the Kings' Arena Land Swap an Indirect Taxpayer Hit?

and may have stolen a thing or two from TZ . . . .

if the area isn’t built, think of all the money that will never be created if it had been built. No salaries, no sales & income tax, and no civic improvements. Even the most cynical tax payer, must know that the jobs created to bring this off will give the local economy a shot in the arm like no other action the legislature can implement.

The entertainment complex and the participation of the Kings is at the heart of the rail yard redevelopment. That whole project might never happen or might be a bust without the new complex. The project mean more construction at the Natomas site, at the railyard and at the old Expo site. At best not going ahead means the Expo authority might sell of some of the existing property for development but certainly not as much as with the land swap. The Kings will eventually move taking some of our civic pride with them, and sell off the Natomas property for development. And the whole railyard project will go on but without the Entertainment Complex at it’s center it won’t be as successful. And, when Arco is leveled to make room for housing, the city of Sacramento will be without any venue for shows and entertainment. And, still people like Walters think this is about the Kings. Maybe, if I worked at a dying dinosaur like the Bee, I’m be as short sited at their staff.

The taxpayers may end up paying more in the long run by NOT agreeing to the land swap. As crazy as that sounds.

Carraige racing is not a big draw. The only thing that makes money is the sportsbook attached. Even on weekends hardly anyone is out there watching the races.

the guy who owned and sold the land had it put in the contract that there must remain a hose track or something.

Doesn’t “status quo” imply an expected norm? Having established that, the status quo currently includes an NBA franchise and a (by all accounts) outdated building to support it. The franchise won’t stick around much longer if something isn’t done about the building, meaning our status will drop (quite significantly, in mine and Seattle’s opinions) and thus crushing the “quo” part of “status quo”. Unless I’m missing something….

but on that point, I’m not sure exactly what Ziller means by mentioning the loan and the parking revenue (seeming to indicate that those issues may become troublesome at some point in the process). I can’t take the time to read the actual proposal right now to get a more solid answer, but this Sacramento Business Journal piece says that the remainder of the loan will be paid off under the Convergence project. It doesn’t say explicitly that the Maloofs will pay it off to make the deal happen, or if other private financiers will pay it off to make the deal happen, or under what terms the loan will be paid off, but in any case I don’t recall seeing anywhere that the loan will be an issue (if this thing had to go on a ballot, you can bet that the voting public would make the loan an issue even if the Maloofs presented KJ with a briefcase filled with $70 million on live television). As to the parking revenues, I don’t recall reading anything about that at all in this plan, which at least for now makes me not really worried about it. If this whole thing comes down to Joe Maloof and Mayor Johnson sitting in a backroom hammering-out the parking split, I’d say the war has pretty much been won at that point and we can all start planning the first StR night at the new digs in 2014.

Of course, they’d be investing their own money because they think there’s a pretty good chance that it will pay off for them somewhere down the road. I just perused the proposal to check for anything about parking revenues and as far as I can tell the City gets all of the parking revenue via a new 3,000 car parking garage (that the proposal lists under “What the City gets”). My first thought was “Hmmm… I wonder why the Maloofs are being so amenable on the parking revenue this time around”, and then I recalled the exact thing that you just brought up. If they’re getting a pretty sweet investment deal in this (along with the whole “awesome arena for their basketball team” thing), they maybe don’t care so much about the parking revenue. Regardless, I really could give a crap who gets my $30 for the privilege of parking down there for a few hours to catch a game, it’s still gonna feel great to have the chance to do that.

Why should the Maloof brothers pay more than market price to stay in Sacramento? That is, if places like San Jose or Anaheim or Kansas City are offering a better deal, why should the brothers Maloff take a lesser deal to stay here? Out of loyalty? I don’t think that worked out to well for the people of Seattle, and that team had been there waaaay longer than the Kings.

That said, the Kings already have a fan base built here, and it’s cheaper to stay than to relocate, especially if there are encroachment fees to be paid to teams like the Dubs, Clips and L*kers. But at the end of the day it is a business decision, made by businessmen. I do not believe that the Maloof brothers will grant Sacramento much “loyalty” in making the decision, nor should they. Sacramento needs to produce a fair market deal, or determine that they do not wish to cater to and host a major league sports franchise. At the end of the day, it’s really that simple. The crafting of the deal may be extremely complex, but the goal is simple – meet or beat the market, or cut bait.

What source are you using to justify one pice of land being worth more than the next? Are you basing current land value off basic value per acre principles? Or are you looking at a viability study that balances size, location, demographic and growth? Or maybe you just looked the properties up on Zillow to get the total acreage and then used Google Earth to “study” which one you think is cooler. Or you just pulled the one fact that your argument is based on (trading “less” valuable land for “more” valuable land, completely out of your ass.

Would you like to be the first to sign a petition that I’ll be circulating for taxpayers who think they’re getting a raw deal with this plan, and they can volunteer to exempt themselves from any of the benefits of this plan (i.e. jobs, entertainment, and outside revenue flooding to the center of the city). It would be tough to do because the scope of the benefits, direct and indirect, will be so broad and so massive that you’d probably have to move out of the region entirely to avoid the positive impacts completely (though, of course, something like this would be extremely good for the state, not just the region, so you’d probably have to move out of the Golden State altogether). I wouldn’t want anyone to have to deal with the guilt of reaping the rewards of something that they are adamantly opposed to.