A new stadium for the Atlanta Falcons will make the team much more valuable for Arthur Blank, but the payoff for metro residents won’t be as lucrative, a Georgia Tech professor says.
Benjamin Flowers, who teaches in Tech's College of Architecture, said the Falcons, which rank near the bottom in franchise value in Forbes magazine's annual valuation of NFL teams, would get a boost from a new stadium through a more favorable revenue deal. But that revenue won't flow to the community, he said, because dollars spent in stadiums tend to stay inside the facility's walls.
On the other hand, Atlanta would be getting a bargain for the money it’s putting into the project, said state Rep. Rashad Taylor, D-Atlanta, who backs the new stadium. The city is committing $300 million through hotel-motel tax collections for the roughly $1 billion facility.
“To me, we have a balanced investment in Atlanta,” Taylor said, comparing other metro areas that are publicly financing anywhere from 73 percent to 100 percent of the costs of their new stadiums. “What we have is a plan with 33 percent public investment and 67 percent private investment.”
Such were the divergent views Monday night in a debate on a proposed new stadium for the Falcons. Despite almost two years of ongoing negotiations between the team and the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, on whose property the facility would be constructed, there have been few opportunities for the public to hear about the proposal or to provide input.
No one from the GWCCA or the Falcons attended the meeting.
Rep. Mike Dudgeon, R-Johns Creek, said constituents lose trust in government when leaders insist they have to tighten budgets and cut programs because of the economy, but then turn around and dedicate money to a stadium.
“For me, it doesn’t pass the smell test,” said Dudgeon.
Many agree. A poll commissioned by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in July found 67 percent of respondents opposed using hotel-motel tax money for the project. Watchdog group Common Cause Georgia on Monday called for more public input in the negotiations.
Rev. Anthony Motley, pastor of Lindsay Street Baptist Church, which is near the two sites under consideration for the field, said stadiums disrupt traffic, discourage people from attending services and impact church revenue.
“The question is: What is the return to the taxpayers on the investment from the projects,” he said.
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