Charlotte isn’t the only North Carolina city considering using public money to bring a baseball team to town. A local group and the Atlanta Braves want to move the Braves class A farm team from Lynchburg, VA to Wilmington. Over at Squall Lines, the JLF’s Wilmington-area site, Chad Adams has written extensively about the proposal. Some highlights worth sharing:
• Richard Florida, Mr. Creative Class himself, is opposed to stadium subsidies, noting that they don’t aid economic development:
I am amazed at how cities continue to get away with such boondoggles in the face of such overwhelming evidence that they are a waste of taxpayer money. Think for a moment of what other, more positive things could be done with those funds – the opportunity costs. I am also amazed that the economic development profession continues to fall behind stadium building efforts. Imagine if doctors continue to practice in a way that flies directly in the face of medical science. As a group of professionals, it would seem that economic developers should be held to some standard of professional accountability here. Is that expecting too much?
• Florida is quite correct on this. The Brookings Institute, for example, put out a book in 1997 titled “Sports, Jobs, & Taxes: Are New Stadiums Worth the Cost?” which argued that the answer to the question was a resounding “no.”
