The scene is a minor-league baseball stadium somewhere in the Inland Empire. The broadcasters are Ralph and Jim, a pair of middle-aged sportscasters, who are calling a Class-A game for local radio listeners.
Ralph: "That's Rickie Newton up to bat for the Hurley-Burleys, and… he swings and misses! Strike one. "
Jim: "Rickie spent his sophomore year in college at UC Riverside, where he compiled a .207 batting average."
Crack.
Ralph: "Ground ball down the first base line! Newton makes a beeline to first base, but the first baseman, Loren Winkle, number 32, is way ahead of him."
Jim: "As you know, Ralph, the Hurley-Burleys are confident that they can take control of Baja Altarumba's new baseball stadium."
Ralph: "That's Howie Flamm, number 51, putting on the batter's helmet. But going back to the baseball stadium: Why would the City of Alta Bajarumba let the local baseball club take control of the city-owned stadium, Jim? There's a lot of public money in that stadium. And coming back to the game, it's a foul ball for Flamm! When you talk to this young man, by the way, he will tell you that he is absolutely, 100% certain he's going back to the majors next year."
Jim: "Well, it takes an extra heaping of self-confidence to win at either sports or real estate. I almost said hootz-pah, like my personal friend Rabbi Jack Sherman over at Temple Gush Emet likes to say."
Crack.
Jim: "It's a long drive to right field, but George Plumm, right fielder for the Speedballs, snags the pill. But getting back to the Hurley-Burleys and their stadium, Ralph, what makes a minor-league baseball team so confident it can take on the management of a big piece of city-owned real estate?"
Ralph: "Jim, I think the Hurleys feel strongly encouraged by the example set by the Lake Elsinore Storm, which has just talked the local City Council into a pretty strong deal. Here's Joey Castro, number 27, loosening up before he steps into the batter's cage."
Jim: "Why did Lake Elsinore decide to lease the stadium to the ball team, Ralphie-boy? Sounds a tad out of the ordinary."
Ralph: "Well, the city is spending a total of $2.8 million to maintain the stadium, and that's a hell of a lot of money for a city of 38,000 people to shell out, especially one that has an annual budget of only $43 million. According to the local sports pages, the city has been losing $500,000 a year on the ballpark. Lake Elsinore needs to stop the bleeding as fast as possible." (After a pause, he goes back to the game.) "And he's out, and the Speedballs are back in the dugout."
Jim: "So, what do you think of that there deal between the Storm, and Lake El-Storm-Some-More?"
Ralph: "Well, I'm not an expert in the economics of running stadiums, Jim, but take a look at some of these numbers: The Storm gets to lease the stadium for 10 years, but apparently does not need to pay rent for the privilege. And knowing the ball club may not have the wherewithal, as my divorce lawyer likes to say, to maintain the stadium from Day One, the city will continue to pay $400,000 over a period of four years to help keep things running. Plus, the city will continue to pay $300,000 every year in maintenance costs for the full 10-year period. Did I mention that Lake Elsinore already pays $2 million a year in debt service on the bonds that the city floated in 1994 to build the 6,000-seat stadium?"
Jim: "Whoa! Back up there, Ralphie-boy! What do all those numbers mean?"
Ralph: "Yes, well, I guess it's an improvement for the city. In the first four years the city will be paying, on average, $2.4 million a year, which is better than the $2.8 million it's paying now, but nothing to crow about. In the last six years of the lease agreement, the city will be paying $2.3 million. So I figure the city will save at least $4.6 million in 10 years. That's worth something."
(A pause.)
Jim (sounding peevish): "Well, if Lake Elsinore is losing so much money on the stadium, then why doesn't the city find some private operator to run the park for them? At the top of the eighth inning, it's 8-7, Speedballs."
Ralph, "Well, that's the rub, Jimbo. One operator signed a 15-year agreement with the city, just to walk away from it. The city attempted to sell the stadium two years ago, but that fell through. So when it comes to finding someone to take that stadium off its hands, you could say that Lake Elsinore has got a mule kicking in its stall."
Jim: "Well, isn't a deal between the Storm and Lake Elsinore good news? Everybody's happy at last. As for that ballgame, here's Pedro Newman, who appears to be coming out of a little bit of a batting slump … and he takes strike one."
Ralph: "Yes, they've staunched the bleeding, but the City of Lake Elsinore doesn't have much to show at the end of day. The team gets to keep all the money from concessions, even the money from naming rights. The city has little ability to recover what little upside may be in the offing. For the stadium to actually make money, the Storm will need to book some concerts or meetings into the stadium. Is that something a minor league ball club knows how to do?"
(Both are silent)
Jim: "At the bottom of the ninth, the Hurley-Burleys are looking challenged, down 10 to 7. Maybe it's just not their day. Hope this doesn't hurt their stadium deal!"
Ralph "You know what they say, Jimbo: It's only a game."
Thanks to the recession and various iterations of the dot-com boom and bust, Silicon Valley has a large, stagnant pool of empty office and light industrial space. The same region is woefully underbuilt with housing. Unsurprisingly, homebuilders are making inroads into the underused office parks and industrial sites in Santa Clara County.
Dammit, it's not fair! Residents of affordable housing get all the lucky breaks. Just look at all the money they're getting from all directions: local government, the local power company, the feds, the green-building lobby. Case in point: the Casa Dominguez development in East Dominguez Hills, an unincorporated area of south Los Angeles County, even has a child care center and a medical clinic, on site.
The Town of Apple Valley wants to build a minor league baseball stadium. That’s not unusual in California, where stadium building seems only a slice less popular than tailgate parties with free-flowing beer. What is unusual, however, is the way that the town plans to pay– or rather, not pay – for this $20 million to $25 million project. >>read more
Remember the cliché about "the deal you can't refuse?" The park-for-a-billboard caper in the city of Los Angeles is just such a deal. I'll tell you about it. (Just as soon, that is, as you put that bottle back in the bag where it belongs. I have no desire to add another item to my institutional resume.)
Granted, the billboard story is hard to explain, because at bottom this deal makes so little sense.
When individuals barter, they generally have a firm sense of underlying value, i.e. "What's this thing really worth to me?" A 10-year-old car might be worth $1,000, to judge from the Recycler or Craig's List. At $20,000, a used car is a bargain only if it is a 1949 Ferrari Spider with the original piping on the seats.
Cities, on the other hand, often appear not to have a sense of "beyond this price we will not go." True, they bargain for big things on which it is hard to pin values, such as stadiums for NFL football and professional soccer. Still, the fact that cities are willing to entertain highly aggressive offers suggests to me that some city officials have a hard time drawing a line between a good deal and a bad one.
Why did nobody tell me that market-rate housing had become a NIMBY issue? Did I sleep this momentous event, just as I sawed a log through the Northridge earthquake? Here I am, bumbling through life as if nothing special is happening, while unbeknownst to me The Walt Disney Company is having one of its most creative moments since it released Dumbo.
Remember the frightening things your mother used to tell you in the name of safety when you were a child? If you went running around with scissors in your hand, you could put out an eye. Or if you went back into the swimming pool too quickly after eating, you could double up with cramps and drown.
The experiences of two developers — one a large-scale master plan developer and the other a smaller, apartment developer — are snapshots of the uneasy relationship between home building and environmental policy in North San Diego County at a time when newly minted environmental laws are racing to keep pace with rapid home building.
While it might be hard to convince some of my left-leaning brethren of the case, the forthcoming auction of El Toro will likely benefit the local community, the military and private business, in that order. The City of Irvine, not known to be a pushover on matters relating to the former Marine Corps base, seems just short of ecstatic about the arrangement.
"Your tax dollars at work!" proclaims a sign at the edge of the road, where a public works project is under construction. If we were to see this sign in Calimesa, a city in the San Gorgonio Pass area of western Riverside County, we might be forgiven for pausing and trying to parse its meaning.