Not much has changed in the hoarse conversation about pro sports stadiums here in the Twin Cities, at least not in the last five years. Public antipathy and skepticism remain about the same, which is to say very high. If decision-makers have learned anything, it is that one does not speak about a new stadium and a public referendum in the same breath. Almost every poll in memory has shown a clear majority of Minnesotans rejecting the idea of public funding for new sports facilities. Yet here we are again. The latest plan to make its way through the daisy chain of hearings, committee meetings, and newspaper editorials would build a $478 million downtown ballpark for the Twins, to be funded mostly by raising sales taxes in Hennepin County.
Sports professionals and fans seem to be taking advantage of the public’s exhaustion with the subject. It is hard to deny the success of the Xcel Energy Center. New stadiums in many other cities certainly raise the pulse of billionaires everywhere. And if the University of Minnesota can drum up thirty million dollars in seed money from TCF Bank, surely the Twins and the Vikings can do the same. Oddly, public outrage also has mellowed with time, as the threat of leaving has time and again turned out to be a feather-filled bluff. Minnesotans will not be blackmailed into an immediate payout, but if the empty threat is repeated for a decade, perhaps we’ll eventually cave.
At some point, though, Minnesotans need to accept certain unpleasant realities. The more inflexible we are about a public payout today, the more likely it is that we’ll pay twice as much tomorrow. It is not a particularly righteous thing, but professional sports are permanently woven into our civic identity. The fact is, we see ourselves as a Big League city, and we will not stop seeing ourselves that way if the Twins decamp to Iowa, or the Vikings move to Nevada. In other words, only a fool would fail to see that, within five years, we’d be paying top dollar to lure professional sports back to the Twin Cities.
You disagree? Let history be a guide: The National Basketball Association approved moving a Detroit basketball team here in 1947. That team cost $15,000, and thirteen years later, the Lakers moved to lakeless Los Angeles. Three decades later, the Timberwolves cost $30 million, the going rate for an expansion team in 1989, and we shelled out $104 million for a new facility. The Minnesota North Stars packed their bags and left “the state of hockey” in 1993. Seven years later, the Wild expansion fee cost $80 million, the team price tag rounded up to about $116 million, and St. Paul coughed up $175 million for a new arena.
Thus it seems to be a question not of whether we’ll pay, but how much and when. Our main problem with the present plan is part of a larger, more general gripe. Just as the cities of blue America pay the bills for red America, it’s generally assumed that people in the city will shell out for what is a region-wide amenity. Normally, this is justified in one way: People who use the stadium will pay for it. But that is not exactly how it works. For years, those of us who live and work here have been forced to pay higher prices—whether or not we are buying tickets at the Target Center or the Metrodome. If you come downtown, you already pay a higher rate of sales tax, there are plenty of fees, and parking costs are almost criminal. Thus there has been a slow but perceptible outflow of leisure dollars from our downtown districts to our suburbs, where parking is free, taxes are anathema, and surcharges minimal.
However, now that the Twins have delineated “Twins Territory” (discovered to be roughly the entire state for which the team is named), why not reduce the burden for any proposed stadium by further spreading the cost? A microscopic sales tax increase statewide would easily pay for an amenity all Minnesotans can appreciate and use and lend their name to. We should stop punishing the city for being so popular.
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