AP: Houston owners give advice to other cities wanting new stadiums

DavidS · Feb 2, 2004

Houston owners give advice to other cities wanting new stadiums

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ap-houstonstadiums&prov=ap&type=lgns

By MARK BABINECK, Associated Press Writer
January 26, 2004

HOUSTON (AP) -- Houston built three new sports arenas in four years, making it the envy of cities struggling to garner public support and tax dollars to replace obsolete stadiums.

The leaders of the city's big-league franchises offered them a little advice Monday: Be patient.

``There are people, just like the people here, who will have to spend a lot of time and effort to educate the community to what the benefits are and as to what's going to be required,'' Texans owner Bob McNair said. ``That takes some time and some effort and a willingness to invest some money in it.''

McNair, Astros owner Drayton McLane Jr. and Rockets president George Postolos spoke to reporters in town for the Super Bowl.

McNair said the NFL would have bypassed Houston for the big game had it not been for the Texans' new stadium.

``Without the resources, without the facility, we wouldn't have a franchise and we wouldn't have a Super Bowl here,'' he said.

His expansion team replaced the Oilers after voters in Houston's Harris County approved using hotel and rental car taxes to build new baseball and football stadiums to replace the aging Astrodome.

Oilers owner Bud Adams moved his team to Nashville for the 1997 season after negotiating the kind of stadium deal he couldn't get in Houston. The team became the Tennessee Titans.

Houston voters approved the stadium referendum in 1996, and the Texans began play in 2002.

``In each of our sports we have close calls, close games. We won by a landslide -- by 50.7 percent of the vote,'' McLane said. ``I shudder to think if we had lost that election.''

Without the $1 billion investment, Houston stood to lose three pro teams.

The Astros were considering Washington, D.C.'s southern suburbs. Los Angeles may have gotten the nod for the NFL's 32nd expansion team. The Rockets could have been the franchise to move to New Orleans instead of the Charlotte Hornets.

The electorate, particularly an overwhelming majority of blacks and Hispanics emboldened by a promise of ample construction contracts for minority-owned firms, didn't let that happen.

``Eight years ago, all our venues were in need of repair,'' said Billy Burge, chairman of the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, the agency in charge of the bond debt. ``At the same time, we had owners who wanted to stay in Houston, but only if the infrastructure they needed was provided.''

It later took the Rockets two referendums to convince voters they should back a new downtown arena, which became the Toyota Center, after building Minute Maid Park and Reliant Stadium.

The combined cost of the three new stadiums was roughly $1 billion. To pay for them, the county has the nation's highest hotel room occupancy tax at 17 percent, along with one of the highest rental car tax rates. The sports authority anticipates paying the debt within 30 years.

Hotels don't appear to lose customers because of the high taxes, said Oliver Luck, a former Oilers quarterback who is now chief executive of the sports authority.

As for rental cars, Luck noted there's really no alternative for travelers hoping to get much accomplished in spread-out Houston.

``There's no public transportation,'' he said. ``If you're coming in for a day or two and have to go to three different places, you have to go rent a car.''

Houston Texans owner Bob McNair, left, Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane, center, and Houston Rockets President and CEO George Postolos, right, take part in a discussion about their team's new venues during a news conference Monday, Jan. 26, 2004 in Houston. Each talked about how they got Houston-area residents to commit nearly $1 billion in bond money to build two new stadiums and an arena in a time when other communities were balking at using public funds.
(AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

mrpaige · Feb 2, 2004

They should've said, "Try to get one of your owners to move a team so the public knows you're serious. That'll help sway the vote."

The teams that don't already have stadiums aren't going to get by with the being patient thing. They've been patient. They need results.

Personally, though, I'm still pulling for the Vikings to ditch Minnesota, even if it takes until 2011 to see it happen (at least in 2011, the whole "We've got a secret piece of paper from the commissioner that no one has seen or can produce but that promises the Vikings won't leave while they're under lease" b.s. won't work. Big bunch of whiners. They'll have to resort to the "they'd never leave Minnesota because we're so wonderful and every place else sucks" rationale)

I wish I was a billionaire so I could buy the Vikes and just run them into the ground for the next seven years and then move the team anywhere else. Too bad Red doesn't share my philosophy.

gs1998 · Feb 2, 2004

Originally posted by DavidS
As for rental cars, Luck noted there's really no alternative for travelers hoping to get much accomplished in spread-out Houston.

``There's no public transportation,'' he said. ``If you're coming in for a day or two and have to go to three different places, you have to go rent a car.''
Click to expand...

"Well, they can't do anything about it, so let's stick it to them."

Jeff · Feb 2, 2004

The truth is that without the baseball park referendum passing in 1996, none of this happens. That original deal set the stage for the Brimer Bill that allowed the formation of the Sports Authority and the building of Minute Maid Park. It also authorized the buidling of what is now Reliant Stadium and gave us the opportunity to vote on the arena - twice.

We're not unique in public funding. Lots of places do it. We're just relatively unique in how it was done because of the short period of time and kinds of financing used.

The irony is that it has gotten EASIER to pass referendums for facilities since the first one opened. I still believe that the opening of then Enron Field did more for the second arena referendum than anything else because people saw the possibility become reality. It's the reason why light rail will probably be exteneded several times.

In referendums, the opposition almost always carries the same message: it's a waste of tax money. Most people, whether they understand the kind of taxation involved or not, are very receptive to that message for the first issue. However, once the first is built and operational - and oftentimes successful - it gets tougher and tougher to convice people of the same message.

It is kind of funny, though, that McNair had pretty much nothing to do with the first referendum in 1996 and was the beneficiary of - BY FAR - the most lucrative stadium deal. Unlike the ballpark or Toyota Center, the Sports Authority had no one with which to negotiate so they didn't set any limits on spending. In the case of the two downtown facilities, the teams were forced into spending millions and there were very specific caps on spending by the authority written into those letter agreements.

With Reliant, there wasn't even a football team. The referendum just left wide open the financing and left it all at the Authority's discretion. Without any kind of public oversight, they could spend pretty much whatever they wanted - and they did. Of course, the Rockets were lucky that the fact that Reliant went WAY over the proposed $325 million price tag didn't come out until a week after the election.

What few knew was that the Sports Authority delayed a discussion of what would amount to a final cost for the football stadium - well over $400 million - until about two weeks after the referendum. Ah, politics.

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