Dear Santa Clarans,
Cedar Fair is demanding that their lease for the Great America theme park be renegotiated, as you've heard. Regardless of the merits of that action, it's worth focusing on the response of Mayor Patricia Mahan: "No. We have a contract. A contract is a contract."
Santa Clara Plays Fair would like to remind Mayor Mahan and the other four elected "Stadium Boosters" on our City Council that a Guiding Principle is a Guiding Principle:
"7. Great America Theme Park/Cedar Fair must agree to and cooperate with any proposed stadium project sited on existing City-owned lands leased or committed to them."
(Agenda Item 5D.1, 1/9/2007)
Note, however, that Cedar Fair puts more Fixed Ground Rent into our City's General Fund than the San Francisco 49ers ever will. Simply compare the $5,300,000 Great America fixed lease payment with the most that the 49ers will ever pay us, $1.5M. Cedar Fair is entitled to be a bit exasperated with the Council's "Stadium Boosters."
Not only that, the City Council got the news this last Tuesday evening: The city's worsening deficit makes it imperative that we protect our General Fund dollars wherever we can.
But subsidizing the San Francisco 49ers causes even worse General Fund losses than we have now - and Cedar Fair, which gets NO subsidy at all from our city while paying us far more, has just drawn a bold red line under that fact.
Regardless of the Cedar Fair action: To protect Santa Clara's General Fund on June 8th, Santa Clara Plays Fair urges you to VOTE NO ON MEASURE J.
Thanks for all of your support,
Bill Bailey, Treasurer
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Saturday, April 24, 2010
The 49ers' Stadium Subsidy: "A contract is a contract."
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6 comments:
I think the case has merit. Where is Santa Clara going to dig up 6k parking slots for Great America, on top of the 17K slots needed by the Niners? Their only hope is for Yahoo to build some big parking garages just off Great America Parkway, and agree to rent them to the Stadium Authority.
Our electric utility, Si Vly Pwr, is being told to spend $20,000,000 to create 380 parking spaces, if you can believe that.
But in the main, there will be ~20,000 total vehicle trips on NFL game days, and only about 1,700 of those vehicles will be able to use the "new" parking garage (planned in 1999!).
The remaining 18,000-some-odd cars will have to be parked in a "private parking district" made up of technology-company parking lots.
Get this: The EIR actually called for tech company owners to clear their parking lots by 3:00pm on Mondays for MNF!
If I owned a company on Patrick Henry Drive, and was told that my employees would be competing for parking spaces in their own lot with football fans (!), I'd conclude that my city's leaders had taken leave of their senses.
That's the lunacy of plunking a 14-acre stadium on a 17-acre site - and "Stadium Boosters" have no answer for you when you pin them to the wall on this one issue.
The parking and jampacked traffic are the first issues that come up when we meet with our neighbors north of U.S. 101, too.
Best regards,
Bill Bailey, Treasurer
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The really BIG issue that few people are aware of or which isn't openly discussed is the borrowed Bond $$$ of more than $315 million that could easily be left on the Santa Clara TAX-PAYERS shoulders if the 49er's should pack up and leave ~~~ as they doing in San Francisco.
(There's NO Guarantee they won't, --- remember they are a Limited Liability Corporation)
Buck Buchanan
I doubt the Niners would leave a new Stadium in Santa Clara - but anything is possible - especially 25 years down the road - or sooner if the parking situation can't get worked out.
IF the Niners were to leave, Mahan said the Bonds would be insured. I doubt they could sell any unless they were. But the devil is in the details. What kind of deductible will the insurance have? I think its probable the Santa Clara general fund will get hit every year on servicing the $330m Bond debt. There is a lot of risk here that Mahan is not willing to acknowledge.
Looks like a Conflict of Interest, if you look at the details !
Didn't the Santa Clara Mayor and the City Council-members say there will be no new taxes ? But they are also the same ones who must approve a $350 million bond issue on our behalf, for construction of the 49er Stadium !
A bond is a tax ~~~ an obligation we must repay !
There is a closed session of the City Council meeting tonight to discuss the lease with Great America. The only way this gets worked out is if the 49'ers reimburse Great America for lost revenues.
Also, I doubt Yahoo builds their campus. They are just getting the permits to increase the value when they try to sell the property when the markets improves. In the short term, it means the existing lots will probably be available for Stadium Parking.
But in the long run, I think a stadium will decreas the value of the land for a corporate client. A few bucks of parking revenue isn't worth the risk of property damage/cleanup and loss of weekend flexability.
I find it very funny that Sparacino strongly endorses the long held city of policy of not offering sweeteners to solid, jobs producing, tax paying companies to locate in Santa Clara - But we are offering the 49'ers a huge subsidy.
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