Facility Notes

In Indianapolis, Scott Olson notes the Capital Improvement Board, which manages Lucas Oil Stadium, “expects to lose money” from hosting Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5. The CIB is “budgeting for total Super Bowl expenses of $8 million and revenue of nearly $7.2 million, leaving a loss of $810,000.” The largest expenditure is the $4M CIB “has agreed to reimburse the city for providing police security for an estimated 150,000 visitors.” It also budgeted almost $2M “to pay full-time employees overtime and union members who have been hired temporarily” (INDIANAPOLIS BUSINESS JOURNAL, 1/16 issue).

WAITING GAME: In St. Paul, Tom Powers wrote he keeps “waiting for some sort of catalyst” for the Vikings’ stadium proposal, but the Metrodome’s expiring lease “isn't going to do it.” Powers: “Nobody appears to be taking it seriously. Veiled threats aren't working, either.” He added, “What we need is an overt threat, something that at least gets those on-the-fence legislators to state a position.” The Vikings “still lack a catalyst, or at least one that people take seriously.” Vikings Owner Zygi Wilf and the entire Wilf family “need better leverage.” Wilf should “let it leak that an investment banker has been hired to explore a possible sale of the Vikings.” If that “doesn't work, he should let it be known that he has received an exceptional bid from Los Angeles interests” (ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS 1/16).

WISHFUL THINKING: In California, Mark Whicker wrote AEG’s proposed Farmers Field in L.A. “remains a name without a place.” There “never has been anything inevitable about the NFL's return” to L.A., either to AEG’s L.A. Live site or to Majestic Realty Chair & CEO Ed Roski's “sidehill lie in the City of Industry.” But there “always has been a lot of wishful journalism about this, because no one in the hinterlands can believe our area can rationally function without the NFL” (ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, 1/14). 

PLACING THEIR BETS: On Long Island, Ted Phillips cites a Siena Research Institute poll that found that the “majority of New Yorkers oppose Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's plan for a convention center at Aqueduct racetrack in Queens.” Fifty-seven percent of registered voters polled said that they “were against the proposal while 38 percent said they supported it and 5 percent said they had no opinion” (NEWSDAY, 1/17).