If the city of Sacramento moves forward with plans for a new arena for the NBA Kings, “it faces a mad scramble to get its downtown railyard ready in time to finish the facility by the promised 2015 deadline,” according to Tony Bizjak in a front-page piece for the SACRAMENTO BEE. Sacramento-based developer David Taylor, whose ICON-Taylor group has been tapped to develop the arena, said last week that shovels "need to hit the ground by April of next year." The city would “need tens of millions of dollars worth of new roads and sewer lines at the site.” Most crucially, city planners have “yet to figure out how to fit the proposed $391 million arena onto a tight triangle of land, and how to integrate the arena with a $300 million transit center also planned there.” The city may have “to purchase even more property,” but it had “some of the needed infrastructure money already in hand, cobbled together for roads and other railyard redevelopment work long before the arena concept came along.” Should the City Council “give a preliminary thumb's up Tuesday night to the arena financing plan, planners would find themselves in hurry-up mode with fingers crossed that they can land more federal grants and local transportation funds years earlier than expected.” Bizjak noted the arena could "jump ahead of the new transit center in construction timing, even though the center has been in the planning for years and the new tracks for Amtrak trains are about to open several hundred feet away from the old depot.” A hotel and premium parking garage “also may be tucked onto the site” (SACRAMENTO BEE, 3/4).
JOINT VENTURE: In Sacramento, Dale Kasler writes locals are “divided on whether their city should spend $255 million in public money on a new sports arena.” AEG projections noted the company could “make $5.7 million in annual profit running the building." A source said that the deal is “so promising for AEG, in fact, that it chipped in another $9 million last Monday without getting anything in return.” Sponsorship and marketing firm Team Services co-Founder & Partner E.J. Narcise says that AEG “would pull in a lot more advertising revenue at the arena than the Maloofs have sold at Power Balance Pavilion.” AEG would “split most of the ad dollars 50-50 with the Kings.” Doug Elmets, spokesperson for Thunder Valley Casino, one of the team’s “top corporate partners,” said that the company “might increase its sponsorship beyond the current $1 million a year.” The Kings would have “gotten one-third of the naming-rights revenue in Anaheim,” but at the new Sacramento arena, “they would split those dollars 50-50 with AEG” (SACRAMENTO BEE, 3/5).
BABY PLEASE DON'T GO: In Sacramento, Ailene Voisin wrote NBA Commissioner David Stern “refused to let Sacramento go” as an NBA market. Stern “forced the parties to the table and then drove them toward a tentative agreement.” He kept “sticking around, coming back for more, despite one failed arena proposal after another.” Clearly, Stern is “influenced by the region's market size (20th) and lack of competition; by the desire to protect small franchises and avert a glut of teams converging on major cities; and by his decades-long push to increase revenue sharing and allow for competitive balance, never more so than during last summer's collective bargaining discussions.” Voisin: “But count me among those who suspect the commissioner was motivated by additional, intangible elements, among them the realization that the Maloofs were never going to sell and that Joe and Gavin never really wanted to leave; that a dynamic young mayor named Kevin Johnson just happened to be a former NBA All-Star and a native Sacramentan; and, perhaps most significantly, that the region's emotional attachment to its only major professional sports franchise was comparable to that of Portland and San Antonio and Salt Lake City” (SACRAMENTO BEE, 3/4). A BEE editorial stated while “not perfect, the deal on the table to build a new sports and entertainment arena in the railyard presents an opportunity that is worth the risks.” Some “call it a giveaway for the Maloofs,” but “unlike last time, the Maloofs are financial partners in the deal.” But you have to “weigh the risks against the near certainty that without a new arena, Sacramento will lose its one major league team and be saddled with a struggling old arena and nothing to jump-start the railyard.” None of those options “is appealing.” The arena deal, “by contrast, holds real promise” (SACRAMENTO BEE, 3/4).
