Charlotte's stadium follies: public money for ego and circuses

Somehow, I missed this detail about the University of North Carolina-Charlotte’s football stadium, now named after Jerry Richardson:

The school had discussed seeking $5 million for temporary naming rights, with an eye toward renewing or signing another agreement after 15 years. Instead, Richardson came along with the $10 million offer and the stadium name was set in perpetuity.

Note: This was after Richardson asked local governments for money to help fund a remodel of the Carolina Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium, and eventually landed some $87 million. So, for $5 million, UNCC sold out its football stadium’s name in perpetuity rather than wait another few years to rinse and repeat. Awesome!

You know what else is awesome? The UNCC football stadium is nice, but didn’t have to be built. By its own calculation, the university borrowed about $40 million and raised the rest through other means, but what about the other options? What about BB&T Park, the new facility being built for the Class-AAA minor league baseball Charlotte Knights in uptown Charlotte?

Obviously, it wouldn’t work to put UNCC’s football team in BofA Stadium for most games right away, as they might only draw 20,000 people (the new stadium holds about 16,000, with plans to expand to about 40,000), but the university could have put money toward building BB&T in such a way that about 15,000 people could watch football there, and then once (if) UNCC gets popular enough, they could move to BofA Stadium.

It’s true that playing baseball in football stadiums is a terrible idea, but playing football in baseball stadiums has a long and proud tradition, and baseball stadiums tend to be far more pleasant places for spectators than football-only facilities. For example, see how AT&T Park, in San Francisco, has been arranged for college football games.

With minimal, if any, changes, BB&T Park could be set up in a similar way, with the football field running from the first base foul territory out into left field, and temporary stands erected in right field. Ideally, the field would be all artificial turf (the good stuff that acts, more or less, like grass; not the carpet, of course), as many minor league parks and football facilities use. But if you want to insist on a grass field, guess what? The minor league baseball schedule ends at the start of September, so there’s virtually no overlap!

I get it: the school wanted a nice shiny toy for itself on campus. However, as a public institution spending public money, it ought to have told Richardson (a.k.a. the dude that had just played hardball with the state for access to the public teat) to go jump in a lake.

And the school really ought to have considered subsidizing the Charlotte Knights’ stadium in exchange for a few tenant perks since, as the Knights point out on their own web site, the land for their new stadium is valued at around $24 million and is being leased for $1 per year. It would have been a win-win for everyone. (Except Jerry Richardson, as it should have been.)

It’s not necessarily easy to make money on college football, especially as part of a non-BCS conference, and this was an opportunity to try something truly revolutionary for a mid-sized city: Leverage one entity’s inability to go anywhere to help entice another entity to stay, while still giving the people the college football team that they appear willing the bankrupt themselves in order to get.

(Image cc-licensed: "DSC_6420" by DigiDreamGrafix.com)

(Image cc-licensed: "UNR @ AT&T Park" by Zack Sheppard)