Downtown Stadium is a Strikeout

It has been interesting to watch news people, politicians, and the business community salivate over the proposed $50 million dollar baseball park adjacent to Railroad Park.  Without fail, proponents cite the positive economic impact and the redevelopment of properties between UAB and 1st Ave North, and without fail there are no dissenters among the voices.

Well, count me among the dissenters.  The academic research on sports stadiums shows that these stadiums benefit investors, owners, and players and no one else.  Some highlights of the research follow:

• According to Calvin Jones in the Journal of Environmenal Planning A, sports stadiums contribute to uneven development between and within cities (think spatial injustice from previous post).
• According to Robert Baade and Richard Dye in Growth and Change: A Journal of Urban and Regional Policy, "the presence of a new or renovated stadium has an uncertain impact on the levels of personal income and possibly a negative impact on local development relative to the region. These results should serve as a caution to those who assume or assert a large positive stadium impact."
• Baade again argues in the Journal of Urban Affairs that "(t)o attract or retain a team, cities are offering staggering financial support and rationalize their largesse on economic grounds. Do professional sports increase income and create jobs in amounts that justify the behavior of cities? The evidence detailed in this paper fails to support such a rationale. The primary beneficiaries of subsidies are the owners and players, not the taxpaying public."
• Adam Zaretsky argues in the April 2001 issue of the Regional Economist, a publication of the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, that "the use of public funds to lure or keep teams begs several questions, the foremost of which is, 'Are these good investments for cities?' The short answer to this question is 'No.' When studying this issue, almost all economists and development specialists (at least those who work independently and not for a chamber of commerce or similar organization) conclude that the rate of return a city or metropolitan area receives for its investment is generally below that of alternative projects. In addition, evidence suggests that cities and metro areas that have invested heavily in sports stadiums and arenas have, on average, experienced slower income growth than those that have not."

Clearly, stadiums do not benefit the majority of the taxpayers and under some circumstances may actually harm them.  Those that benefit from the subsidy are those that seek to gain the most from the development: real estate magnates benefiting from rising land values, investors in businesses in the surrounding entertainment district, and politicians with more money for their projects.  No cities build baseball stadiums with public money anymore, specifically because there are few public benefits and legions of private sector benefits.

If Birmingham Barons owner Don Logan wants to move the Barons back to Birmingham, he should assemble his own investors. God forbid that he put his own cash up for the stadium [/sarcasm].  It is understandable that Birmingham wants to follow the lead of many cities in turning downtown into a playground for the rich, but careful attention to the research reveals that the benefits from such redevelopment never actually trickle down.

Birmingham needs a municipal economics built on service to the least fortunate, not the most fortunate.  Parkside stadium strikes out in this regard.