"Big Black Holes"

Pete Toms of Baseball Digest Daily rounds up the evidence against baseball stadiums effectiveness as anchors in mixed-use development projects (third item down), and it's considerable:

Many are skeptical of the ability of sports venues to anchor these urban redevelopment initiatives. From the same piece, “Stadiums attract large crowds on an infrequent basis who stay for short periods of time and cause traffic congestion. That kind of activity cannot support neighboring businesses, and it can make living near a stadium a hassle." "'Sports venues alone are just big black holes that have the ability to depress the neighborhoods in which they're in,' Stanford University economics professor Roger Noll told the trade magazine Retail Traffic."

Nevertheless:

. . . the Chair of Economics at Clemson University Raymond Sauer asks, “ . . . as the myth of stadiums as economic development gets exposed, will that lead to more or less government spending? In the Atlanta case, and other cities where these integrated development plans are emerging, the answer seems to be 'more.'"

On the one hand, this is absolutely stupid. On the other hand, the same kinds of people making these dumb decisions that are the ones sending me a check for $600 this spring, so we may want to keep them around regardless.