A Tale of Two Stadiums [View all]

[MineralMan]

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Here in Minneapolis St. Paul, MN, an era is ending and another beginning. The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome will see its last public event today, when the Minnesota Vikings play the Detroit Lions in the last game of the season for both lousy teams. The game will be boring, and the teams have no stake in performing well for the sold-out crowd seeking to attend this last, historic game. The Metrodome, first used in 1982, will be demolished, beginning not long after this final game is over. In its place will rise a new stadium, looking for all the world like a monstrous glass cathedral.

The HHH Metrodome was built with a large influx of taxpayer dollars, and with the promise of great economic benefits to the Twin Cities. Those benefits remain unseen so far, really. There were, of course, a couple of sports bars built near the edifice, so a few long-term jobs in the food service industry were created, I guess, but the expansive conception of a thriving community around that stadium somehow never became a reality.

The new $1 billion Vikings stadium, like the old one, will be built with the help of a very large sum of taxpayer dollars as well, and the arguments for that public investment are pretty much the same arguments raised for the one they are now tearing down. The likelihood that the benefits will appear this time is about the same as the last time. But, an edifice is needed, and will be built. So spake the movers and shakers of Minnesota.

For what, some ask? Well, for the pride of the community! For a multi-purpose stadium for the citizens of Minnesota! Perhaps, but the real benefits will accrue to the owner of the Minnesota Vikings, one Zygi Wilf, a real estate magnate who, by chance, was recently judged to be a fraud in the state of New Jersey, and will have to pay almost $100 million in damages to the defrauded party. Zygi, a mustachioed entrepreneur of the first water will see the selling price for the Minnesota Vikings increase dramatically once the new stadium is erected. Now, to be fair, Zygi is contributing part of the cost of this new football cathedral, as is the NFL, but that money is highly leveraged and one wonders how long the lever might be and where the fulcrum will be placed. I suspect the fulcrum will bear directly on the backs of Minnesota taxpayers in some circuitous way.

For our investment, Minnesota residents will have the opportunity to visit this new cathedral honoring a boy's game at least 8 times each year, and maybe 9, if the team actually wins enough games to be in the playoffs. That, given the last two seasons, though, seems highly unlikely. There will also be some other opportunities to visit the new stadium, perhaps. A monster truck rally or two, and other possible events that are as yet unknown. Still, given the price of this new stadium, ticket prices are bound to go up substantially, and they are already high enough that most Minnesotans do not have the price of a ticket available so they can attend a game. Only those of considerable means will have entry into this stadium, it appears.

It is folly. This new stadium, built on the backs of Minnesota taxpayers at extreme cost, with the price of attendance high enough to prevent most of those who pay for the stadium from every attending a game, is an obscenity. That the taxpayers of Minnesota will be forced to pay for a facility they cannot use, all for the profit of a man already judged to be a fraud, is the source of the obscenity. When will we learn that public money should not be spent on rich men's foolishness? When will we say NO! to such excesses? When will that money be spent instead on rebuilding infrastructures, pacifying troubled urban neighborhoods and educating Minnesota's children?

Perhaps next time? This time, there's no such luck.

The New Viking's Cathedral