No more taxpayer-funded stadiums, please

The Chronicle is really pushing Major League Soccer. A little over a week ago, Glenn Davis wrote a column about Houston Sports Authority chief Oliver Luck dreaming of a soccer stadium.

Today we have a story by Dale Robertson letting us know how swell it would be to have a professional soccer team here:

Major League Soccer realizes it should be in Houston. Houston believes it should have an MLS team. Philosophically, all parties are in accord. But without an economically viable soccer-specific stadium, a solution remains elusive, and one isn't imminent.

Stop right there. If MLS has had this Houston epiphany, then MLS should buy some land and build a stadium, with private money. Houston is really tapped out right now:

The cost of building Minute Maid Park, Reliant Stadium and Toyota Center rose by $37.2 million this week when the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority voted to issue new bonds.

Issuing the bonds was necessary to persuade one of the three major investment rating agencies, Moody's, not to downgrade the authority's bonds from investment grade status to junk bonds, said Ric Campo, chairman of the authority's finance committee.

The new bonds were needed to make up for declining hotel and car rental tax revenues, which the authority receives to pay off bond debt. In 2002 and 2003, the revenues sagged 10 percent.

To meet the annual payments for $900 million in previously issued bonds, the authority had projected annual 3 percent increases in hotel and car rental tax revenues.

"September 11 came and the recession came, and the hotel and car rental taxes have not been growing 3 percent. They're declining," said Oliver Luck, sports authority executive director.

The three sporting venues cost $1.036 billion to build. (Reliant Stadium cost $500 million, Minute Maid Park, $286 million, and Toyota Center, $250 million.) With the bond issuance, the price tag has now risen to $1.073 billion.

No more taxpayer-funded stadiums. If it's such a great idea, MLS can raise private funds to do it. That's the way all these stadiums should have been handled, frankly.

Posted by Anne Linehan @ 02/15/05 04:24 PM | Houston Politics | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (4)

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