Indeed, Marlins owner Jeff Loria is so confident that he's already trotting out the baloney that, in most cases, you wouldn't want subject to scrutiny while litigation is still pending:
The team notes that the building will make a significant economic impact on the area."The new ballpark will provide approximately 2,000 jobs during the three-year construction cycle," Loria said. "It will be an economic boon to the County and the City and will provide a first-class venue not only for the Marlins, but also for the community as a whole.
Gotta love an optimist. If this stadium is an economic boon to anyone besides Jeff Loria, it will be a first.
4 comments:
well, if all he is saying is that it will be a boon while it is being constructed, then technically he's right. but once its done, and especially the way ballparks are made now, yes, its going to be a black hole of economic activity. still, at least it sounds as tho Loria is getting slightly more honest with his BS.
I'm not sure how Loria can be ripped here. I don't see where he's promising the pie-in-the-sky economic redevelopment or neighborhood revitalization in Overtown, one of the poorest and most rundown 'hoods in South Florida.
He states the number of construction jobs. He says that this constitutes economic boom. He says it will be a first-class venue.
There has always been an inherent promise of pie in the sky redevelopment whenever a team has approached a government asking for a publically funded stadium, and there is certainly that promise made to voters when they've been asked to approve such schemes (assuming they get the chance). While Loria's specific comments in this article aren't in and of themselves objectionable, they are backed by that history.
And really, I'm not opposed to the project as such, but ask yourself: If Loria and the team built the stadium with their own money, wouldn't we have the same level of redevelopment, the same number of construction jobs, and the same revitalization that we'll see as it is? The only difference is that taxpayers aren't paying hundreds of millions in that case, thereby allowing the money to be used elsewhere and the net public gain to be all the greater.
By publically funding this, the biggest beneficiary are the Florida Marlins.
Yeah. The Marlins win, everyone else loses. Those funds could be used to create way more than 2,000 temporary jobs for a 3 year period if they weren't taken from people and businesses in the first place.
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