This emerging model is much superior to that of raising taxes, and even though it still involves public expenditure, the public funds used clearly improve the public tax base, (by improving infrastructure and helping create a taxed entity, primarily involving a temporary cost to the public) without raising taxes (almost always involving a permanent cost to the public).
Land is the new currency in sports
Private development at Cal Expo eyed as way to pay for arena.
By Terri Hardy and Mary Lynne Vellinga - Bee Staff Writers
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, October 6, 2007
Land has become the new ATM for sports team owners who want better digs but can't get voters to part with the cash to build them.
The NBA's fledgling plan to build a new Kings arena at Cal Expo and pay for it with profits from private development on the state-owned site is the latest in a series of such proposals around the country.
"It's a new model that's very common," said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College and an expert on sports financing.
Instead of raising sales or car rental taxes, governments can provide sports team owners with zoning changes or, in some cases, the land itself on which to build profit-making developments.
"There has been a real pushback by the public on taxes, so they're finding a way around that," said Dennis Coates, an economist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
