Forward Together Columbus Seeks Fix for Jackets
For the past year, there have been ongoing discussions about the future of Nationwide Arena and the Columbus Blue Jackets. The team is losing money, and discussion between The Jackets, Nationwide Realty Investors, The City of Columbus and Franklin County have not yet provided a plan for addressing the issue of retaining the team.
Several months ago, the Forward Together Columbus committee was launched as a citizen-led effort seeking to rally community support for fixing the funding issues and keeping the Blue Jackets in Columbus. We recently sat down with John Bentine, Co-Chair of Forward Together Columbus, to find out more about this initiative.
Walker Evans: I’ve heard from some people who are confused about what exactly this effort and petition mean. Can you give us the brief overview?
John Bentine: Sure. The co-chairs of this effort are a diverse group of people. We had all independently contacted the Blue Jackets. The Blue Jackets did facilitate us getting together, but we are self-led. We have taken on the task of trying to do some public education about why this is important and has ramifications beyond the Blue Jackets themselves. We are not supporting one solution over another other than to say that there needs to be some sort of public/private fix for the financial situation. There is a financial model in place now for the Blue Jackets that is different than any other professional sports team in the country, and it really can’t be sustained. I’m not connected with the Blue Jackets in any way, but my view is that there needs to be some solution, so we’re promoting that. The city of Columbus was given a gift from Nationwide and the Blue Jackets initially in the way of our Arena getting built with private money. That created a very strong economic engine here… it’s a destination place. If the Blue Jackets aren’t there, I don’t know what happens to that district and the arena. The convention bureau gave us some estimates on the amount of traffic they get just from having the arena there. So it really is synergistic. The Short North and the Arena District, in my view, are a real destination place with a lot of diverse activity and we need to continue to cultivate that and not let a big piece of it go away.
WE: The Chamber released a report in November about the different solutions for this issue and what they would mean. The Forward Together petition basically says that we need ANY solution. Are you finding it difficult to get people to sign it because of that?
JB: Some people want to see a specific solution. That is a legitimate question. People do ask exactly what we are promoting. We are promoting some sort of fix that involves both the public and private sector. I’m not sure we can come up with that solution on our own though… that is going to take a lot of discussion between county commissioners and other elected officials and Nationwide and The Blue Jackets. We’re six volunteers and a steering committee of forty-some members. We don’t really have time to do that, other than to say there are people that can make the decisions that need to get together and do something about this. Of course, that has caused some people to say that they can’t really support signing that petition. But there are a lot of models out there for solutions. There was a nice article on the Columbus Hockey Writers’ Blog that looks at the NHL’s other structures on how they are supported. Obviously, I think people will say that the less public involvement, the better. But we just know that given the things at stake, it justifies some public involvement.
WE: So what can we learn from those other cities and setups? Our situation is fairly unique, but are there similar sports franchises that have been setup with this type of private investor development?
JB: No, and that’s what’s interesting. Most of these Arenas that have been built in the last twenty years have had some public involvement and have had continued public involvement. We are unique. I look at it as a gift that we got without a lot of tax payer subsidy and involvement in the beginning. That went on the ballot several times and this community voted it down. It did get done using private money and it is a great venue. It becomes something that now that we have it we need to make sure it is sustained. I just went over to Indianapolis recently to watch the Buckeyes play. They have a vibrant and full downtown. It made me realize how important this is. It is driving our downtown development now. This is a great asset for our community.
WE: As you mentioned, when the Arena was originally proposed for publicly-funded construction, it was voted down. Do you think people are going to vote down any new publicly funded plan? And if they do, do you think Nationwide will follow the same steps that they did before and step up to the plate to find a solution on the private-sector side?
JB: I don’t think what we have right now can be sustained. They are not making this stuff up. I think the McConnell’s had a commitment to this community. They still have that commitment. Nationwide still does. But the model can’t be sustained in my view. I liken it to an insurance policy… if it’s brought in $30 million in taxes now, can we afford to put some of that money back in for what it’s created? I think that’s right. The disposable income of people in Columbus is the disposable income… some of those dollars are going to go someplace else if the Blue Jackets aren’t there. If that starts fading, the district is bringing in less tax money. Youth hockey events bring a lot of people from the region to the Arena. If you start losing the infrastructure that supports that, then you are going to lose that revenue. We’ll also lose a draw for conventions and other events. If the Blue Jackets move, it would be hard to believe another major league franchise is going to come to Columbus to fill the gap. How will the Arena District be sustained? That’s a scary thought for me.
WE: About a year ago there was an article saying that The Blue Jackets have brought $2 Billion to our local economy since their start in Columbus. I’m been hearing many people debate about what it would look like if the Blue Jackets did leave town… how many supportive or secondary jobs would be lost. Do you have any studies or projections on that?
JB: I don’t, no. Maybe somebody else has done that… I don’t know. I do think we have to look at this in terms of what the Arena is doing today. Like I said, if the Blue Jackets move, I don’t know how you maintain or operate the Arena as a stand-alone entity. I don’t know how losing a 15-thousand attendance trickles down. Some say the lockout was a trial for that, but that was a short term issue. What worries me more would be the long term affects. I’d hate to try to predict that, but I’m sure that it wouldn’t be a good scenario.
WE: I’ve heard some folks talking about the original expensive lease agreement that has not allowed the Blue Jackets to turn a profit year after year. There’s also the issue of player and employee salaries growing each year. Do you think some of the private solution could come from a renegotiating of the lease between the Jackets & NRI?
JB: Absolutely. I haven’t been involved directly, but I think Nationwide is willing to be flexible to be a part of the solution, as well as the Blue Jackets. Everyone is committed to finding a solution to this. We just need to find it and move on.
WE: What are the short term plans for the Forward Together petition?
JB: We’d like to get to 10,000 signatures on our petition. It’s at 9,116 as of April 18th. We’ve got more petition efforts going on in the Arena District. People on the committee are emailing, making the media rounds, letters to the editor, and things like that. Some of those have been coordinated efforts, but more have been from individuals who have decided that this is an important issue.
More information can be found online at www.forwardtogethercolumbus.org.
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April 18th, 2010 at 10:07 am
If the BJs actually help out businesses, then let those businesses pay into a fund to subsidize the BJs. But to have the rest of us hoof the bill? We already said “no dice” to that before they got themselves into the mess.
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No moo taxes!
April 18th, 2010 at 11:23 am
NO NO NO NO NO public involvement. As long as the solution doesn’t involve public money, I hope we get a solution. I’d love to keep the Jackets, but no sports team is worth public subsidies. Period.
I’ve looked at this group’s website, and there’s some serious misinformation on the economic impact of sports. That said, I really hope they succeed in keeping the Jackets here. As long as it’s not public money.
April 18th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Jefe Says: no sports team is worth public subsidies. Period.
Isn’t practically every sports team in the country built with some form of public subsidy?
April 18th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Yes. So? Just because most places that have sports subsidize them doesn’t mean it’s worth it. Most people listen to bogus economics like the ones this group posits, and we justify subsidizing sports based on that. Plus, voters generally like sports, so it’s an easy way to gain favor for politicians.
Seattle did a wonderful job of saying “no” to the Sonics. Their economy has not suffered, and their public coffers don’t have the payout on the balance sheet.
Further reading here: http://thesportseconomist.com/labels/stadium%20subsidies.htm
If a sports team isn’t viable on the market for its own merit, it shouldn’t exist.
April 18th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Sports teams
1. Add to the quality of life of the citizens
2. Become a part of the identity of the city
The numbers these pro-sports groups generate are suspect or flat out don’t work. The joyless blog Jefe linked points out examples over and over again. A similar argument could be crafted for public support of the symphony or for the arts. Fair enough. “Worth it” to a city is more than just an economic analysis.
I understand public funding for arts and entertainment is anathema to some. But sports teams that are not publicly funded will leave. Such is life in modern America. And if the teams leave Columbus will be a less interesting place to live, especially to a subset of young professionals.
Maybe we can feel better about the fiscal health of our city and as we visit another more economically sound megamall or the new casino for entertainment.
April 18th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Jefe Says: Yes. So? Just because most places that have sports subsidize them doesn’t mean it’s worth it.
I’m not arguing in favor of us subsidizing the Jackets. I really don’t have enough information at this point in time to make a personal decision on which course of action is going to be best here.
But whether or not something is “worth” some amount of money is a subjective measurement. I think we need to know more about what will be asked of the public and what we can honestly expect to lose before that judgment call can be made by most people.
April 18th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
@MattCooper - Actually, megamalls and casinos are also bad ideas in terms of public money. I argued against the casino for similar reasons. They don’t offer cities real development. I’m not sure what precisely you mean by “The Arts.” Sort of vague. If you look at the specifics of why pro sports doesn’t help, you can see that much of the reasoning doesn’t apply to “The Arts” since most art spending is on local folks who create positive multipliers. Rich owners with high savings rates and rich athletes who aren’t local don’t have positive multipliers.
@Walker - Something is “worth” it to me if it returns positive investment for the city. Stadia/arenas/sports really don’t. The numbers don’t crunch.
Listen, I love sports. But public resources are finite. Money spent on pro sports is money that could be invested elsewhere. For example, take MattCooper’s idea of arts funding. Say we care about the entertainment aspect of the city. Let’s be very conservative and say we’d spend $5 million saving the Blue Jackets. That amount could generate $150,000 annually (at only 3% interest). Could you imagine how much activity would be generated by, say, official city prizes for $75,000 each for Columbus’s best music group and artist. Or just a massive official $150,000 battle of the bands every year? Limited to locals acts, we’d soon have an amazing music scene—our own answer to SXSW. Which reminds me: Austin seems to have no problem with identity despite not having pro sports.
Do I expect the above to happen? No, not really. It’s fairly unrealistic. It might even be an awful idea. But it illustrates that public money isn’t unlimited and that if you spend on something with dubious economic impact, you’re passing up real investment opportunities on local people/resources in the same arena—no pun intended.
April 18th, 2010 at 9:35 pm
I have to agree - the idea of paying public money to support very wealthy sports organizations is just repulsive. I know that lots of cities do it, but it seems like corporate welfare of the worst sort. Sports teams make a lot of money, and they should be able to support their business without handouts from the taxpayer.
April 18th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
Let the free market work. Tax payers should not bailout Nationwide and the BJ.
April 19th, 2010 at 10:39 am
Just to nip another pro-corporate-welfare argument in the bud– folks often trot out the “we generate this-and-such business revenue for the community”. The fallacy of that argument is that it assumes if the to-be-subsidized activity didn’t exist, that people would horde their money and not spend it.
I’m a bovinous sort; I consort with bovinous sorts; thus, I recognize BS when I see it. And that, sir, is BS.
People want to be entertained. If the BJs can’t get their business plan together and threaten to relocate to Abilene, Kansas City, or some other cowtown, then I for one say, mooooove along! We’ll find something else to spend our money on.
—
No moo taxes!
April 19th, 2010 at 11:18 am
Just heard that the Cleveland Cavs have been losing upwards of $20 million a year for the past few years. The only NBA team to really make any profit lately is the Lakers ($50 million or so for 2009). If the Cavs can not at least break even with a guy like LeBron, it will be real tough on the Jackets.
April 19th, 2010 at 11:50 am
They need to stop overpaying their players if they aren’t making money. They weren’t losing money the first few seasons when they had a reasonable payroll. This is the NHL, not the NFL, stop spending money you don’t have.
April 19th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
@Mister MooCow - Exactly right. $2 billion can be tangentially attributed to the Blue Jackets, but it can’t be said that the Blue Jackets generated that money. It’s almost all substitute entertainment spending.
@jawjack187 - The Cavs made $5m last season, $13m the year before, $32m in 2007, and $26m in 2006. They haven’t lost money since before LeBron got there. Only 12 NBA teams didn’t make money in 2009. That said, most of them get subsidized arena deals (including the Cavs), which is BS.
April 19th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
The Blue Jackets aren’t overpaying their players. They don’t even spend to the cap.
April 19th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
@MFRONE, let me rephrase that then, they’re overspending on their players. If the BJ’s are spending more money then they are making then they are overspending.
April 19th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
@Jefe, I got that info from 97.1 the Fan (Cowherd’s show). Maybe they were wrong.
April 19th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
http://realgm.com/src_wiretap_archives/66038/20100417/cavs_will_lose_$10m___$15m_this_season/
The quote from this morning kinda said this verbatim.
April 19th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
I wonder how the tone of this discussion would go if we were discussing removing public funding for the arts, or making the people who will use the Scioto Mile pay for it.
April 19th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
…who do you think is paying for the Scioto Mile exactly? (at least half of it).
April 19th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
@jawjack187 - I got it from Forbes. I suppose there could deviations in figures. Of the two, I’d tend to trust Forbes of Cowherd…but I’d have to know who Colin got his info from to really tell.
@cmhcow - If the Scioto Mile were a private corporation, most of us would be against propping it up with taxpayers’ money. Just like I’m sure most of us would be against bailing out a country club. There’s a difference between public works and private enterprise. As for “The Arts,” I already illustrated ways in which that can be a positive public investment.
April 19th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
Right - “the arts” and the Scioto Mile are not for profit business organizations with employees making millions a year.
April 19th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
What I find interesting is that when the Columbus symphony got into financial trouble and it looked like they couldn’t survive under the current financial model, they asked for concessions from their employees, the musicians. And they got it in the form of significantly reduced pay. Would the hockey players be willing to make the same concessions to insure that the Blue Jackets survive in Columbus?
April 20th, 2010 at 9:43 am
I’m not sure that a lack of a professional hocky team will have a negative impact on the convention business. I really can’t see someone saying; “Well we’d love to have a proctologists convention, but there is no hockey team within walking distance”.
BTW, how much are they paying that player who called Columbus a; “Goat town”?
April 20th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Tenzo, to be fair to that player, he may have had literary intent. Washington Irving used the term “Gotham” in the early 1800s as a satirical sobriquet of sorts for New York City. Gotham is an old Anglo-Saxon word that means “Goat’s Town.” Perhaps that player is a 19th century American literature buff who let his passion encroach upon his sense of civic pride.
I think we are learning that when a city of our demographic and economic capacity expends resources, space, and energy on providing an arena for the explicit purpose of supporting a corporation’s vanity professional sports enterprise, then that city to a degree, whether it likes it or not, is at the mercy of that corporation and that enterprise. When the corporation claims it requires considerations from the city or it will take its toys and go home, there are two choices, and both, like this year’s Blue Jackets, stink on ice: either yes, the city will make considerations and subsidize your untenable business practices; or no, we are prepared to have an empty, all but useless, $175,000,000+ building sitting in the center of our city for the foreseeable future. It’s clear to me that Forward Together has terrific intentions, and I’m sure they are honest in their efforts. I wish them luck in coming up with a creative solution. But the private/public partnership isn’t a true third-way. Such a partnership will inevitably be out of balance in favor of the private at the expense of the public, precisely because this was a vanity endeavor for the private “partner” from the beginning, and it has become an economic well-being issue for the public. I don’t think it rises to the level of “extortion,” as I’ve heard and read it described in other places, but the city will pay a price no matter the outcome.
April 20th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
So basically all professional sports stadiums exist in America today because of public-private partnerships aka some type of public financing, right? I can’t think of any reason Columbus would be an exception.
So being against public financing of pro stadiums is basically deciding to be against having pro sports in town. Fair enough, we can disagree about this.
Just food for thought, I think that whatever the city does with the Bluejackets will ultimately be the fate for the Crew. And probably for any another pro team the city tries to get in the future.
here are some quotes from the Crew’s ownership and GM:
[URL="http://www.crewxtra.com/live/content/features/stories/2009/11/19/ca_u_crew_gm.html?sid=108"]Crew GM Mark McCullers 11/2009[/URL] “We’ve seen what’s happened with the Blue Jackets and their situation with a privately financed, privately held facility. This community has struggled in getting public-private partnerships put in place in order to build professional sports infrastructure, and it’s something that we’ve got to figure out. I’ll be meeting, and I have been meeting with local politicians and community leaders. But we need to fix this problem for the professional sports industry, not just the Blue Jackets, so in five to 10 years, when we’re either needing to address our situation here or if we’re talking about a new stadium, we’ve got a mechanism in place that’s a public-private partnership that’s going to be able to get the job done and in five to 10 years we’re not looking at the same situation with the Crew that we’re looking at with the BlueJackets right now.” [URL="http://blog.dispatch.com/crew/2010/03/more_from_clark_hunt.shtml"]Crew Owner Clark Hunt 3/2010[/URL] [B]Are you at the point where you are simply waiting on some help from local business and political leaders to help with some of the facility improvements you would like to see?[/B] “I wouldn’t say we’re waiting on it. That’s something that’s very important for us to cultivate. Ultimately, sports franchises belong to the communities they play in. From a fan standpoint, a corporate standpoint, a political standpoint, we need people to understand our value to the city. We haven’t yet gone throughout the difficult process of building a publicly-supported facility. That’s probably something the franchise is going to need to stay in Columbus. That’s our home, but at some point in the future we’ll have to cross that bridge.”
If the Jackets leave, I think the Crew eventually will too. And then we’ll be left with only one taxpayer supported Professional sports team in town, the Buckeyes ;)