David Trinh

Matt Yglesias responds to a piece I read in the Times this morning about a nationwide glut of stadium space:

Charles Bagli has an interesting piece in the New York Times about metropolitan areas suffering from a glut of arenas. He leads with the case of New York City, but the most clear-cut example is probably one he gets to later, Minneapolis. They have the Target Center in Minneapolis and a separate Excel Energy Arena in St. Paul for the NHL’s Wild. Meanwhile, “Both sites are losing money, and they must also compete with the University of Minnesota, which has two arenas.” On top of all that, Minneapolis just isn’t an especially large metropolitan area.

This is too bad. Unlike a football stadium, an indoor arena really can serve as an important element in neighborhood revitalization. That’s because an arena fits relatively comfortably into the urban landscape and also because, in principle, an arena can be used on a high proportion of days. But of course to get a high usage rate, you need to pack a bunch of different things—NBA, NHL, maybe a WNBA or Arena Football, concerts, etc.—all into one space. Splitting it up among two or three not only creates money-losing arenas, but deprives the arena neighborhood of the critical mass of foot traffic that can turn it into something worthwhile.

Exactly.  I would add that not only is this problem bad but it’s going to get even worsewhen Target Field, the new Twins stadium, opens in the warehouse district next year.   When the Twins leave the Metrodome (another facility which both the Times and Yglesias neglect to mention) will be deprived of one of its biggest clients.  To top all that off, the Vikings too are begging for a stadium, so it’s entirely possible that the Twin Cities will soon have five massive arenas serving a metropolitan area which is much, much smaller than New York City.  If New York can’t support this many arenas, I don’t see how Minneapolis and St. Paul can possibly fill the same number of seats. 

In brief, this is why I believe it is extremely irresponsible for municipalities and other levels of governments to involve themselves in large commercial development projects.  If the Twins need a new stadium, then the owners of the team should front the money and pay for it themselves.  Instead the taxpayers of Hennepin County are subsidizing a massive public works project (to the tune of $392 million), a project which is less than germane to the public’s welfare. 

Look, big shiny new buildings are certainly sexy; however, the government’s job is not to support huge entertainment complexes, especially when such support gets in the way of arguably more important things like public safety and road repair.  Further, not only are projects like this outside of the scope of government but, more often than not, government actually does a pretty poor job of encouraging the right kind of development: the most strikingly egregious example of intervention obviously being the Block E in downtown Minneapolis (seriously, go read the Yelp reviews for this place– they’re a riot).  If there is a bright side to any of this it is that Target Field is being built right next to both the failed Target Center and the apocalyptically awful Block E, so at the very least this new urban hellhole will be contained to a few sad square blocks.