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Ballpark Study Confesses: "We Hastened and Greatly Worsened the Glut"
ecoasttransplant said: "As for the population growth...it is comical you point out Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and New York. ... Why don't you look at Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, San Jose and ummm SAN DIEGO. ========================================== Why exactly is it comical? I'd be happy to compare the two lists. See if you can spot the difference in population densities (pop per sq mile) between the growing cities and the shrinking cities. San Antonio: 2,808.5 Phoenix: 2,937.8 Dalls: 3,697.44 Houston: 3,897 San Diego: 4,174.8 San Jose: 5,758.1 NY: 27,440 Boston: 13,321 Chicago: 12,649 Philly: 11,410 Detroit: 6,370.1 Cleveland: 6,166.5 Buffalo: 7,206.4 The populations of Buffalo, Detroit and Cleveland have dropped by roughly half to achieve those densities. LA is an over-populated hell hole which still doesn't compare with the east coast cities. LA: 8,205/sq mi (3,168/km2).— July 21, 2010 10:57 p.m.
Ballpark Study Confesses: "We Hastened and Greatly Worsened the Glut"
ecoast said: "I am happy Petco Park was built because it was one of the reasons I purchased downtown. I will be even more happy when the new football stadium goes up next to it. Not only will my property values go up but my quality of life will improve. " ====================================== Well, that pretty much explains your position. You bought into the downtown speculation, you have taken a bath lately, and you desperately need more of our tax dollars to prop up you property value. You are most likely also wildly in favor of the convention center expansion, new city hall, chargers stadium and library. How convenient for your property value if the city spends a couple billion it can't afford downtown while letting the rest of the city rot. If you want to argue relative merits of the trolley versus the freeway, fine, but when you call a sports stadium for a billionaire a public works project, then you have no credibility.— July 21, 2010 10:26 p.m.
Ballpark Study Confesses: "We Hastened and Greatly Worsened the Glut"
Grasca said: "Mayor Dick Murphy who coined the phrase "America's Finest City" to describe San Diego." No, you are off by 30 years. Newly elected mayor Pete Wilson coined the phrase to boost the city's morale after Nixon pulled the 1972 republican convention from San Diego due to rampant corruption. San Diego held "America's finest city week" that year the same week as the Republican convention which was moved to Miami.— July 21, 2010 10:49 a.m.
Ballpark Study Confesses: "We Hastened and Greatly Worsened the Glut"
EC said: "People want to bitch about Petco Park yet the taxpayer is shelling out $1.3 BILLION for the I-15 express lane project." ======== Please stop confusing public infrastructure with a huge subsidy to a private business. Those are two different arguments. EC said: "San Diego needs to create a dense urban core." ======== Says who? Why? To improve San Diego has a whole, or to improve your particular experience and property values in a tiny slice of San Diego? San Diego is geographically huge. Why should any proposed dense urban core be centered around your apartment building??? EC said: "Population trends around the US prove that the migration is going to happen back to the core." ======== Really? The studies I have read don't say that. Can you cite your source for such a statement? EC said: "Urban development takes time as in decades not years or months" ========= While the population of the country rose by 78.9% in the 5 decades from 1950 to 2000, the urban cores where you are from dropped dramatically: Philadelphia (-26.7%), Boston(-26.5%), Chicago(-20.0%), Detroit(-48.6%), Cleveland (-47.7%). New York held steady and is about the same. Yes, you know failure, so why are you proposing we reproduce it in San Diego?— July 21, 2010 10:41 a.m.
Ballpark Study Confesses: "We Hastened and Greatly Worsened the Glut"
ecoasttransplant said: "Anyways...most of you are twits. You want to cry about how much a ballpark costs and fail to ignore the infrastructure costs for your freaking cars that make the ballpark a drop in the bucket." ... Every single item that people are complaining about with the ballpark district cost is repeated around San Diego. ============================================================= If ectransplant is still listening: I don't see MLB and NFL stadiums sprouting up all over the county, so no, every single item of complaint is emphatically NOT being repeated around San Diego. I have no problem with the debate over the proper use of infrastructure dollars, but you are (intentionally?) confusing the issue by equating a huge public subsidy for a private business (the ballpark) with public infrastructure. The debate arguing the merits of a high density downtown versus suburban sprawl has nothing to do with Petco. At least the issue gets discussed here at length, since we are constantly failing to ignore it.— July 20, 2010 7:08 a.m.
Ballpark Study Confesses: "We Hastened and Greatly Worsened the Glut"
refriedgringo said: "But I also think that the housing bubble bursting had more to do with this mess than some are willing to admit" I think you touched on something without realizing it. Yes, the housing bubble bursting ravaged the downtown developments, but the fact is that the housing was built based on the bubble, not on the stadium. The bubble was obviously going to pop at some point, but developers always think they can get in and get out before it happens. The buildings were built because of cheap land and incentives along with skyrocketing housing prices, not because of the ballpark. The stadium also had virtually nothing to do with hotels either built or planned. Baseball stadiums don't need hotels. The hotels are strictly for the convention center. In fact, if the "ballpark district" was renamed the "convention center district" and the ballpark was never built but the same developer incentives were in place, just as much development would have occurred (for better or worse), the neighborhoods would be nicer without that monolith blocking streets and views, and the city would be a whole lot better off financially. If there was no designation of blight at all, and the area continued to develop naturally as a mixed use work/live with some light industrial, we would all be a lot better off today.— July 19, 2010 10:23 p.m.
Cunningham Says Local Economic Recovery Losing Momentum
Response to #4: "we came off during the 2007 wildfire incident complex looking a lot better than New Orleans immediately after Katrina" That comparison was made at the time primarily by self-aggrandizing politicians, and it is an apples to oranges comparison completely unfair to New Orleans. Most of San Diego was unaffected by the fires, including the vast majority of the richest coastal areas. There were lots of people with the means to help and there were plenty of evacuation locations for both people and animals. In New Orleans, EVERYONE was affected, and the neighbors nearby the extreme flooding had either evacuated or were hard at work dealing with their own major weather damage.— July 19, 2010 10:24 a.m.
U-T Doesn't Identify Paid Consultant
Don, What do you know about Rosentraub? Here are his books on the subject: 1999: "Major League Losers: The Real Cost Of Sports And Who's Paying For It". From a review: Team owners, he argues, blackmail cities into huge ``welfare'' subsidies that ``transfer . . . wealth from the lower and middle classes to the upper class.'' They are able to do so because ``sports cartels'' insure that ``the number of cities that want teams exceeds the supply,'' thus setting off bidding wars among locales. Rosentraub's solution: End the cartels, get the government out of sports, and let the free market rule. 2003: "Public Dollars, Private Stadiums: The Battle over Building Sports Stadiums" From a review: In the face of studies demonstrating that new sports facilities don’t live up to their promise of big money, proponents are using a new tactic to win public subsidies¾ touting intangible "social" rewards, such as prestige and community cohesion. The authors find these to be empty promises as well, demonstrating that new stadiums may exacerbate, rather than erase, many social problems. 2009: "Major League Winners: Using Sports and Cultural Centers as Tools for Economic Development" From a review: illustrates through telling stories and meticulous research, the power of sports venues to generate economic development. WTF?!?!?— July 15, 2010 9:31 a.m.
U-T Doesn't Identify Paid Consultant
"So all I want to know is how the U/T went from news gathering organization to football/building developer pimp?" =============================================================== I believe that died when Don left, although it was on life support for years prior to that. What I want to know is why Spanos or Moores didn't just buy the paper outright to be their mouthpiece since it was basically given away.— July 15, 2010 9:22 a.m.
Judge Confirms Ruling; Sanders Must Give Deposition
laplaya, I have sneaking feeling that the interpreted meaning of City Charter Section 225 has been badly bastardized to the point of being meaningless. The charter says that no contract may be entered into: "unless the person applying or bargaining therefor makes a full and complete disclosure of the name and identity of any and all persons directly or indirectly involved in the application or proposed transaction and the precise nature of all interests of all persons therein." However, it also says that: "For purposes of this Charter section, the term “person” means any natural person, joint venture, joint stock company, partnership, association, firm, club, company, corporation, business trust, organization or entity." I'll bet they simply replace all instances of "person" with "company" (or even "Delaware LLC") and claim they are in compliance. Try making that substitution in the charter paragraph cited above, and watch transparency disappear! That interpretation must be correct, otherwise the City Attorney or the Ethics Commission would have put a stop to doing business with anonymous Delaware LLC's (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), right? (Say no more)— July 12, 2010 7:56 p.m.