Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Location: An overgrown 350K person suburb of Saint Paul
383 posts, read 900,470 times
Reputation: 248
Advertisements
Because, the community centers attract events that would normally not come to their towns if they didn't have a community center, such as conventions, swap meets and various fairs. Also, there's a sense of community pride that comes from having a football/baseball/basketball/hockey team that competes in state that can't be matched by anything else.
Using your logic, Paris should stop pouring public money into the Eiffel Tower.
1) I don't have a problem with the Vikings making money anymore than I do the Twins, Guthrie Theatre, MTC, Best Buy, Mpls Convention Center, etc. In fact, it validates the public contribution all that much more. The Twins turned around and immediately signed home town hero Joe Mauer to the 3rd richest contract in MLB history. Wouldn't have happened without their revenue stream recently increasing.
2) The Gophers and Twins stadiums will not be viable for many events outside the May - September window for obvious reasons.
3) I view the Vikings presence as something more than a ledger entry. I'd be disappointed if they left but not distraught.
4) Logically, you are right in the whole parochial attitude as the players are nothing more than temporary residents. But until they start calling this group something other than the Minnesota Vikings, I (and many others) will still identify with them as "one of us". Sometimes logic needs to be ignored in the pursuit of fun. Growing up in Bloomington, the Twins, Vikings & North Stars were hard-wired into my perspective. Never really got into the Wild and would probably have the same disconnect with a different football team as well. Certainly didn't ever become a fan of the LA Lakers or Dallas Stars and I wouldn't be a fan of the LA Vikings either.
That's just the way I feel about it. Not saying I'm right and your wrong but I do feel this area is better with the Vikings and Twins than without. The costs to the taxpayer is negligible and I spend a lot of my taxes on things that don't benefit me but accept there is a quality of life aspect to those things that can't be diseminated from a Profit & Loss Statement.
To your 1st bullet. MTC bleeds red ink. I don't know about the Guthrie. I too want all business to make money. But buy me a new building and I will create more jobs, pay more taxes etc as well. Speaking of which, are the "Minnesota" Vikings generating the best ROI for this supposedly incredible investment? Our State and Counties makes decisions based off of emotions.
To bullet # 3 (not just a ledger entry). I agree. I'd prefer them to stay as well. The problem is everyone claimed they needed their own stadium. I guess that means for dollars (on average) for the other sports teams.
I personally think logic needs to be examined at a certain point (versus letting an emotion called "fun" take over).
Location: An overgrown 350K person suburb of Saint Paul
383 posts, read 900,470 times
Reputation: 248
Public transit isn't designed to make money, it's designed to circulate the local workforce to other parts of the metro. Unless you feel comfortable paying 5 dollars for a hamburger at McDonald's, don't knock Metro Transit.
Because, the community centers attract events that would normally not come to their towns if they didn't have a community center, such as conventions, swap meets and various fairs. Also, there's a sense of community pride that comes from having a football/baseball/basketball/hockey team that competes in state that can't be matched by anything else.
Using your logic, Paris should stop pouring public money into the Eiffel Tower.
Did you catch my point made a bunch of times about how many stadiums does it take?? Rewind 2-3 years. We had all of this state pride with the Twins, Gophers, and Vikings and they were in the same stadium. We put together competitive teams and nobody was complaining too much. Now we are prepared to rationalize building yet another one and even more expensive than before. Even though we have a roof on the dome, the Xcel, and the Target Center, it seems people think we need another roof.
To your other point. If Paris wants to build 3-5 Eiffel Towers, I'll call them financial idiots as well.
Public transit isn't designed to make money, it's designed to circulate the local workforce to other parts of the metro. Unless you feel comfortable paying 5 dollars for a hamburger at McDonald's, don't knock Metro Transit.
I don't get your point. What does McDonald's have to do with anything?
Ghengis said he had no problem with MTC making money. My point was MTC is bleeding red ink. While I assume public transit isn't designed to make money, I hope the folks in charge might want to break even or get close to it. Instead, it seems they spend money like a bottomless pit.
It's just another example why less government involvement is better.
Location: An overgrown 350K person suburb of Saint Paul
383 posts, read 900,470 times
Reputation: 248
Because for a business like McDonald's or any other business that depends on minimum wage workers to at least break even, they need to transport workers from areas that have high levels of unskilled labor. If they couldn't get those workers, they'd have a smaller pool of workers to attract to their jobs, thus, they'd have to up their prices to attract those workers. Higher prices on workers' wages=higher prices on product.
In the end, transit's a net gain for an economy. Case in point, in all intents and purposes, I'm dirt poor. I had one of 3 options to get to work when I worked in Edina (Again, don't let my listed location fool you, I returned to the Phillips Neighborhood): Ride my bike, walk or take Metro Transit. Riding my bike would take too long and also, I probably wouldn't have had my bike if I didn't work at another place which required transit and spent my check to get the bike, so we could strike that out. So the only other option would have been to take Metro Transit. Now, let's say TPaw eliminated MTC with a stroke of his pen. Workers like me who would have gone to Edina to work wouldn't be able to get to Edina. Instead, the store that I used to work for would now have to up their wages to attract kids from Edina who probably get more money for their allowance than what I got paid every other week. Soon, the price of a pair of kid's shoes wouldn't be 40 bucks a pair, it'll probably have to shoot up to about either 44 bucks a pair or even 50 bucks a pair to match the salary demands of the workers. Larger salaries for menial jobs means that the workers tend to get lazy and they gain a feeling of entitlement (Case in point, the Ford motorworks), which means service and quality goes down.
IMHO, Jason Lewis hasn't ever had to pull himself from the bootstraps to survive, and that's why a lot of what he says is bunk. Also, he's the epitome of the parochial attitude that pervades this area. A lot of what he says is fundamentally true, but even a blind squirrel can find a pile of acorns.
Bob Davis should have gotten the big break and not Jason Lewis, IMHO.
Did you catch my point made a bunch of times about how many stadiums does it take?? Rewind 2-3 years. We had all of this state pride with the Twins, Gophers, and Vikings and they were in the same stadium. We put together competitive teams and nobody was complaining too much. Now we are prepared to rationalize building yet another one and even more expensive than before. Even though we have a roof on the dome, the Xcel, and the Target Center, it seems people think we need another roof.
To your other point. If Paris wants to build 3-5 Eiffel Towers, I'll call them financial idiots as well.
Who paid for the Excel? Just wondering if anyone knows.
MN-Born-N-Raised, you're making a lot of great arguments, and these questions need to be asked...However, it's really hard for ME to answer them, because I would like to see one built, lol.
I think a better question to ask is...
"Why are the Wild and Timberwolves playing in seperate buildings?
NBA and NHL teams split arenas everywhere. Even LA has the Clippers, Lakers and Kings sharing a building during the winter months. It's a lot less functional to mix Baseball and Football designs. They just don't work. What you get is a crappy pieced together eye-sore like the Metrodome, Silverdome, Superdome, Atlanta Dome, King Dome, etc.
I also think that it's important to the University of Minnesota to have a stadium on campus. How can you compete? The U obviously makes its money from out-of-state students, so they NEED to be a draw to outsiders. What's the competitive advantage of having a Football stadium (arguably the most followed college sport) MILES from campus? How are you going to draw in Timmy from Wisconsin, Davy from Iowa, and Sara from Illinois? What's it to them to go to Minnesota? Education i hope, but then it's the little things that matter, like campus life, which is the second most important reason for selecting a school.
I also don't get why this is even an issue. Almost all other pro sport metros have 4 seperate buildings (or 3) on TOP of having multiple big time college venues.
Detroit has the Palace, Ford Field and Comerica Park
St. Louis has their Dome, Busch, and wherever the Blues play
Philly has 3
Wisconsin has 3
Denver has Coors, Mile High, and Pepsi Arena
Actually, put it this way, there are more NBA/NHL arenas than MLB/NFL or NFL/NCAA venues.
The better question is "Why do the Wild and TWolves play in seperate buildings?" And that may have to be answered by politicians circa 1997.
Maybe that answers your curiosity as to why, but your questions about funding, I'm with you for the most part. I do think that some should be put on the taxpayers, heck I'm not going to benefit at all from this stadium, but many people are going to make money just for the simple fact that Target Field is shiny and nice.
Again, I'll post pics of Philly when I get home. It was a sad sight to see.
Dig deeper (I'm looking for some honesty). Why do you have pride for this team. Do you know any of the players? Did they grow-up in MN? Is the owner from here? If the owner threatens to leave every-so-often because he wants a new stadium (to be realigned because he has a contract) why do you have loyalty to him and the team that HE owns?? I hate to break this to you but the Vikings are Ziggy Wilf's team not yours.
Now if you said you love to to watch World Class athletes compete I get that. If you enjoy looking at the stats or enjoy the atmosphere of catching a game etc. I get that too.
But "it's a home pride thing" seems silly to drop hundreds of millions on of tax payers money because you have a "pride thing going". They p_issed away their opportunity to make a stadium for at least a couple of the teams. Now they want their own for 8-10 games. Don't you find that economically stupid?
Haha..There is no deeper issue then why they are the Mn Vikings. I don't really see why your getting so upset. I can see your point on not spending public $$ to bulid it but to say the Vikings are not Minnesotas team because their owner isnt' from MN, and many of the players are not as well doesn't mean they are not Minnesotas team.
Location: An overgrown 350K person suburb of Saint Paul
383 posts, read 900,470 times
Reputation: 248
Quote:
"Why are the Wild and Timberwolves playing in seperate buildings?
NBA and NHL teams split arenas everywhere. Even LA has the Clippers, Lakers and Kings sharing a building during the winter months. It's a lot less functional to mix Baseball and Football designs. They just don't work. What you get is a crappy pieced together eye-sore like the Metrodome, Silverdome, Superdome, Atlanta Dome, King Dome, etc.
Many reasons why. Hockey isn't as big of a sell in the West Metro as it is in the East Metro. A lot of ticket sales come from walk up 11th hour sales. Hockey, while being popular in the entire TC metro and the state at large, simply isn't very popular in Minneapolis. It's just the demographics of MPLS. There are a lot of immigrants from warm weather countries and states as well as the general local stigmatization of hockey being a "white trash sport" pervades Minneapolis. Minneapolis is about to have only one high school hockey team because of that anti-hockey culture. You could bring up the U's hockey team, but most of those fans are usually college students from outstate MN who grew up watching hockey. Not to mention too that the U is fairly close to Merriam Park border, so there are a lot of walk up fans coming from that direction.
Also, STP needed a revitalization project and a major league sports team (Hint Hint, anti-stadium folks) was a way to revitalize what was becoming a dead city and a way to put STP on the map. It worked when the Wild made it to the Campbell Trophy Finals. DT STP's vibrancy has increased somewhat because of the new arena. It's still dead in some ways, but it wasn't as dead as it was before the Wild was there.
Who paid for the Excel? Just wondering if anyone knows.
Xcel Energy Center was 100% publicly financed by the state and city of St. Paul. The state put up $65 million in an interest free loan. St. Paul financed the rest through sales tax revenue bonds.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Our State and Counties makes decisions based off of emotions.
