Nowhere does the concept of public-private partnerships get more controversial or thornier than when it’s applied to create a financing package for new sports stadiums.
The Atlanta Falcons organization says it’s time to build a new arena, one that reflects the NFL’s current fashion regarding amenities — things such as how many suite seats are located where, or even how much of a roof, if any, should cover the turf.
Negotiations are now ongoing about how to pay for a new stadium in a manner that won’t unduly tick off either tax-averse taxpayers or Arthur Blank & Co. That’s not easy when the projected cost hovers near $1 billion. It’s hard to imagine a more delicate balance needing to be struck.
That said, it’s incumbent on the Georgia World Congress Center Authority and anyone else sitting on the public side of the negotiating table to push for the best deal possible for taxpayers that still keeps the Falcons in Atlanta.
Doing so would represent sound civic leadership. It would also be a pragmatic local admission of a national reality that’s tough for politicians to openly acknowledge — that the public, in some manner, usually pays a sizable sum to upgrade or build anew the stadiums that team owners nationwide have a habit of clamoring for every couple of decades. That’s the way the game’s played, truth be told.
Kicking in public dollars by the hundreds of millions is the cost of doing business with today’s sports mega-franchises. It’s akin to the economic development incentives governments routinely dangle in front of job creators to help seal deals.
To argue otherwise is pretty naive in this day and time. If Atlanta doesn’t do it, some other city in search of an NFL team will be waving a lucrative aid package. Just ask cities that have lost sports teams.
That’s why grass-roots protests and grumbling in sports towns often prove ineffective as deals are struck. In those instances, pragmatic politicians come to believe that no-new-stadium alternatives would be worse than committing public dollars to such projects.
In this regard, sports fans and civic leaders should ask themselves what array of sports teams is most befitting of our hard-won stature as an A-list metropolis both nationally and globally? Do we want to remain in the top tier of sports cities? Given this region’s competitive, pro-business spirit, we think the answer is clear. We need the Falcons here.
To their credit, the Falcons have expressed their strong desire to stick around. Not all team owners have been as well-grounded, or behaved as honorably in the back-and-forth of new stadium negotiations.
And in reality, this game may have already been won two years ago. As the AJC’s Jim Galloway noted last week, Georgia legislators quietly enabled a big part of a future financing deal in 2010 when they approved an extension of a Fulton County hotel-motel tax that would raise an estimated $300 million for the stadium project.
With roughly one-third of the $900 million-plus cost accounted for by that legislative action, the state has already bought a big block of seats in a new stadium, so to speak.
Using tax revenue gleaned from visitors is about the least painful way to pay the public part of the cost. Travelers nationwide have grown used to seeing hefty targeted tax rates applied to their bills at checkout time.
In an ideal world, the hotel-motel tax would be the only public money added into the financing mix for a new Falcons stadium. The team and the NFL should be able to come up with financing options to cover the rest.
Abiding by that funding formula would be a win-win for the Falcons and metro Atlantans.
Andre Jackson, for the Editorial Board
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