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From Business First of Columbus:
Nationwide Arena sale under discussion
by Jeff BellThe Columbus Blue Jackets are leading discussions about the possible sale of Nationwide Arena to Franklin County, using higher taxes on alcohol and cigarettes to help fund the deal.
Preliminary talks have been held between Blue Jackets and Franklin County officials, state legislators and Nationwide Insurance executives over helping the National Hockey League club solve its economic problems, Columbus Business First has learned. One option under discussion calls for the county to buy the 18,000-seat arena from Nationwide so the team can work toward getting a better lease.
You know I am not even a smoker anymore and I think it’s bull that they keep getting taxed! How about we tax stuff that makes people over weight like HFCS, or fast food? How about a toilet paper tax it’s non bias everyone needs it everyone uses it problem solved.
Or how about they tax Blue Jackets tickets and merchandise?
Don’t they already ?
More, then?
How about having the casinos pay taxes for this?
1) Work out a better deal with Nationwide and Dispatch Printing. If Nationwide sells they should lose naming rights and revenue from their suite deals (pun intended).
2) Buy it at the price they proposed it be valued at for tax purposes ($46.5 Million) and see if they are serious about selling or were lying back in ’03.
This whole thing sounds like a bad deal all around. Make taxpayers take any losses, while Nationwide and the Blue Jackets reap any and all gains. If Nationwide can’t accomodate them and the CBJ elect for the nuclear option, Nationwide Realty is gonna be stuck with the Empty Arena District. This is just pure bullshit. NHL’s revenue sharing deal doesn’t help at all either.
If the county does a deal at all it should be revenue neutral, not cost taxpayers a dime, and be painful for CBJ and Nationwide to an extent.
I may be totally un-American with this, and I understand that CBJ=jobs and money, but why in the hell should the government be expected to take on the role of property holder? I really like small government, I really like government not involved in the workings of a business even if that means capitalism rips that business apart. What changed to make ours a culture of corporate socialism? Franklin County buys the arena because CBJ is bellyaching over rent, down the road the arena is in disrepair and voters are expected to foot the bill to do something about it or CBJ will leave town. Haven’t we all seen this play out before, and not only just up the street in Franklinton but in other cities?
I hope we stay out of this mess.
But… the Jackets don’t *own* Nationwide Arena, do they? My understanding is they just have a cushy rental deal.
And how many times did the voters say they don’t want a municipally owned arena?
(Didn’t see this post and started another — sorry hegemo)
My understanding is that the Jackets want the county to be the new landlord and would then negotiate a long term rent contract to get a better rate.
Brothermarcus,
Are you saying your position is “un-American” in light of the recent “change we can believe in” going on in our country? Your position is “American” as it gets, IMHO, or at least it used to be.
Oh yeah, and another thing, I completely agree with you.
Glad I live within a stone’s throw of Delaware county.
What a slap in the face to one of the town’s larger private employers. If Anhueser Busch chooses to publicly fight this, I will switch to drinking Bud Light for 1 year. For those of you that say it doesn’t matter, I bet I’m a line item on the SAB Miller annual report.
Semi-related topic: Does the county own Huntington Park? I’m pretty sure they owned Cooper, as well as the Clippers themselves, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they bought the new stadium.
Regardless of that, I’m with brothermarcus on the idea of the county buying the land. First, the county loses the property tax revenue it gets leaving the arena in private hands. Second, it seems like just about every publicly-owned sports arena in the country needs constant taxpayer bailouts. Third, NRI really isn’t doing that bad a job owning the place. Fourth, well, if the Jackets threaten to skip town now that they’ve started having some success, I’d be more than willing to call their bluff rather than sign up for an annual blackmail bill.
I will concede this: if NRI is *really* willing to sell at a bargain-basement price (e.g., at the auditor’s depressed value, or less), there might be something to say for the proposition simply because, well, most things are economically rational at a cheap enough price. NRI almost certainly wouldn’t sell for that, though, particularly knowing that the government, with its deep pockets and the ability to hit taxpayers up for more, was the prospective buyer.
Personally, though, I think that the Arena District as a whole basically just works at the moment, and I’d be chary of doing anything that might disturb that–which would include taking NRI out of being the arena’s landlord. At the very least, the county already owns the GCCC, which is enough to manage. If the Jackets threaten to force the issue by threatening to move, well, deal with that when they start actually getting serious about signing on to take over in Phoenix (their own team just declared bankruptcy) or Kansas City or wherever–or, better yet, let them leave and see to it that the door hits them on the way out. Their lease with NRI isn’t *that* bad, to the best of my knowledge.
The county shouldn’t be viewed as the get-out-of-jail free card. If they want the county to buy it, then the county should give them a very lowball offer. I’m not opposed to a publicly held stadium necessarily (though I admit I haven’t put much thought into it and could be swayed with a good argument), but there’s no reason for everyone in Franklin County to take on a risk/burden with a stadium that a private business wouldn’t.
As I said earlier, they should try renegotiating with Nationwide first. The last thing Nationwide needs is an empty arena in the middle of their $750 Million investment. If that doesn’t work, the county should only offer the $46.5 Million that Nationwide claimed the place was worth years ago. Nationwide will look like a jerk if they don’t accept, proving they were fudging the value to reduce the tax payment.
The weird thing is that this is all from the Blue Jackets. That’s like me trying to arrange the sale of my landlord’s property, so I can pay less rent. How does that work? If it does, I may have to try it.
Yep.
According to The Dispatch, here’s the damage. I did the approximate calculations:
25 cents/ gallon on beer = ~29 cents/12 pack
$3 gallon on liquor = 75 cents/liter
32 cents / gallon on wine = ~8 cents per bottl
both the arena and convention center are run day-to-day by the same company, SMG based in Philadelphia
As far as I know the blue jackets get 51% of everything that happens in the arena, don’t recall what they pay in rent but it isn’t much, they aren’t having money issues cause of their deal with the arena or arrangement here in town, its the NHL and economy plus their own labor issues.
SMG running both was a constant conflict of interest for my old boss at the arena too….they compete for events often times, when the hockey strike happened it almost put the arena out of business–they couldn’t book enough events, 3 a month just wasn’t enough. Especially when many of them didn’t draw but like 2000-5000 people at the gate. When the ice is in place that alone costs $80k+ a month, it is a very expensive place to run. It has to stay pretty busy to make any money. Massive man hours for each event, about 200-250 just for cleanup and setup per event. Some events that can easily double, football and basketball setups took us on average 18-20 hours just to do. That’s 400 man hours plus the army of cleanup crew that take like 6-8hrs to clean the place per event.
I know one thing for certain, after working there behind the scenes often 24hr+ shifts it isn’t what a lot of people think, hard work and very very low pay. There’s a whole army of low paid workers with crappy working conditions and a chronic problem retaining help. The changeover crew had about a 95% attrition rate per year. Equipment wise and safety wise the place is kinda scary, quite a bit of it is held together with bailing wire and chewing gum just about. The maintenance guys work miracles daily keeping that place in operation.
They’re playing a zero sum game with all the cigarette taxes. Every time they go up, I guarantee “X” number of people quit smoking, and eventually those prices will negate any tax increase with a decrease in customers.
They’re over 5 bucks now, and I’m on the verge.
Perhaps the same low value Nationwide has always insisted on when it comes to paying taxes?
But there are savings in the public health budget.
Jackets are far from having a cushy rental deal. They get nothing from the naming rights of the arena, very few (if any) dollars from parking and barely any money from suite sales. The Jackets are hoping Nationwide will sell the arena and then re-invest the money to become a minority owner of the team.
This is happening because the tax payers voted down a tax to build the arena.