Color me extremely skeptical that the Charlotte Knights can go up-market with a minor league franchise in Uptown. Nevermind the particulars of the deal to build a stadium, which are finally come into clearer view with a better idea of the public cost of the scheme. (The tax-increment financing part still gives me the willies.)
It simply seems very iffy to base your operating plan on selling luxury boxes to a minor league event. Now maybe Don Beaver, via Michael Smith and Tim Smith, has received a wink-and-a-shake from Bank of Wachovia Power that the tasseled loafer crowd will definitely snap up the boxes. A deductible entertainment expense is a deductible entertainment expense, right?
We still, at some point, run into the same, hard ceiling of disposable entertainment dollars in Charlotte, however. Building stuff does not create more local spendable cash – especially if building has the effect of taxing more money out of the private sector. (See the car rental and hotel-motel tax hikes of recent months.)
On some level even the Uptown crowd seems to get this closed loop — witness the constant push to attract out of town disposable dollars to Charlotte.
But for AAA baseball? This thing is still not squaring up.
