There was a lot of talk during this week’s State of the Union Address about fixing America’s “crumbling infrastructure”. Well, those attending the Super Bowl in the Twin Cities this weekend will get to see plenty of new infrastructure. I’m not talking about the replacement bridge along Interstate 35 after the fatal collapse or the light rail line that runs between Mall of America and the baseball stadium. I’m referring to the new definition of “infrastructure”: sports stadiums.
Consider that in 1987–just thirty years ago–the Twin Cities had one sports stadium, the MetroDome, and two arenas, The Met Center and the St Paul Civic Auditorium. The Twins, the Vikings and the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team all shared the MetroDome–while the North Stars played at the Met.
Then, the NBA awarded the Cities an expansion team–the Timberwolves. The owner of the new team had no interest in playing at the existing Met, so he built his own arena in downtown Minneapolis in 1990–the Target Center–at a cost of 104-million dollars. Just five years later, he and his family divested themselves of the franchise–but the new owner had no interest in owning the arena–so the City of Minneapolis ponied up 72-million dollars to buy the building, and an additional 50-million bucks for an interior renovation–even though the facility was just five years old. As part of the deal, the City also pays a 1.6-million dollar annual subsidy to the arena to cover operating losses–even though it has some event there almost every night. And now, the City is funding another renovation, to the tune of 49-million dollars.
Then in the late 1990’s, the National Hockey League awarded an expansion franchise to the Twin Cities–The Minnesota Wild–to replace the North Stars–who had moved to Dallas about a decade earlier. Despite having a fairly new Target Center in which to play games, the ownership group of the Wild wanted their own brand-new arena in which to play. The City of Saint Paul jumped at the chance to one up Minneapolis and built them the Xcel Energy Center–at a cost of 170-million dollars. Xcel was built on the site of the Civic Center–which was torn down at the age of 37.
Then, the University of Minnesota decided they didn’t want to share the MetroDome anymore, so they convinced the State to provide 138-million dollars toward a new on-campus football facility–TCF Bank Stadium. Another 111-million bucks were ponied up by the University–from donations that people apparently didn’t want to give to classrooms or scholarships. When the Vikings played there for two seasons, an additional 7-million dollars was needed for “upgrades” to a three year old stadium.
After several failed attempts to leave, the Minnesota Twins were threatened with contraction by Major League Baseball in the early 2000’s, and that convinced Hennepin County to pay 260-million dollars toward construction of Target Field in downtown Minneapolis.
Finally, the Minnesota Vikings, fed up with being stuck in the MetroDome by themselves got the State to pony up 498-million dollars to fund a portion of US Bank Stadium–which will host Sunday’s Super Bowl. State lawmakers thought they could save taxpayers money by funding the project with legalized pull-tab gambling–but so far revenues have been only five percent of what was expected–and it will in fact be the taxpayers funding the state’s share of the stadium costs.
Now if you lost track with all of those numbers, the Twin Cities has spent 1.4-BILLION dollars in public monies on five sports facilities in just the past 30-years–all so their privately-owned teams (except the Gophers) don’t have to share arenas or stadiums and they can keep luxury suite revenues. I’m guessing they could have fixed a lot of “crumbling infrastructure” with that cash–and likely still had their teams.
