Subsidized stadium benefits: “It’s a case of the seen and unseen”
March 19th, 2010 by 
Melvin
I haven’t brought it up much on The Sac Bunt, but since developing an interest in the study of economics I’ve become a strong critic of publicly funded sports projects. JC Bradbury, a favorite sports blogger and professor of economics, eloquently explains why. (video below)
It’s very easy to see a new stadium going up, people spending money on tickets, concessions, but what you don’t see is that something else didn’t get built across town. We didn’t see waitress jobs lost, movie theater jobs lost, it’s just transferring [money] from one place to the other.
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Without the ballpark, there is no development downtown. It brought jobs to a blighted area and increased property values which increased property taxes. From what I have read in the CCDC pieces on it the amount of property tax revenue, money brought into downtown businesses and jobs created downtown was substantial. The Padres paid for more than half the costs of construction themselves and are paying a lease that more than covers bond payments over the 20 years of the lease, so I don’t see how what JC Bradbury wrote applies.
“It brought jobs to a blighted area”
The point of the article, highlighted by the headline, is this: Jobs and economics benefits that exist only because others have been destroyed makes us poorer.
I agree it’s great that the team contributed to about half the cost of the ballpark, so I suppose that makes half of it a fair deal. The Giants found a way to pay for their entire ballpark. Why can’t the Padres?