Posted on 04/04/2017 11:46:52 AM PDT by PBRCat
Four years ago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel argued that he wasn’t using public money to build a basketball arena for DePaul as much as DePaul was “subsidizing” an “event center” that McCormick Place needs to compete...
Chicago-based sports business consultant Marc Ganis predicted that most of the events would be “economically meaningless, both to the facility and to Chicago taxpayers.”
“I fully expect they will do whatever they can in the first few years to try and gin up a positive spin because this was such a foolhardy project in the first place,” said Ganis, who has opposed the project from the get-go.
“It was a ridiculous use of limited public money at a time when we’re raising taxes to unprecedented levels and still see no light at the end of the tunnel. Every now and then, governments decide to build vanity projects. That’s what this is.”
(Excerpt) Read more at chicago.suntimes.com ...
I don’t know what the big deal is; DePaul only needs a row of lawn chairs for its home games.
It is Chicago, where things get built to these standards with public money! They will always need “just a little more” to finish it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidenae
Stadium disaster
In 27 AD, an apparently cheaply built wooden amphitheater, constructed by an entrepreneur named Atilius, collapsed in Fidenae resulting in by far the worst stadium disaster in history with anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 dead and wounded out of the total audience of 50,000.[5][6]
Exactly right!
Using fuzzy math, Rahm Emanuel insists that the arena will turn a profit which assumes that the lackluster DePaul team is going to being playing its games before capacity crowds for years to come.
What is he smoking?
kickbacks....useless projects still bring in big money to construction companies, unions etc....
I heard a podcast about this. DePaul is only drawing under 3,000 a game. What a downfall for a top program. The last guy I remember who played at DePaul was Dallas Comegys. I wonder if fans miss Jr. who the fans drove out.
Looking it up, they had one great coach for 42 years. Over the next 13 years, they gradually faded from being a perennial NCAA team to a 3-23 (1-13 in conference) record. They had a few decent seasons under a guy named Leitao, but they fired him when they went “big time” by joining the Big East... and ended up with a coach who led them to a 0-18 record. A couple coaches later, Leitao’s back, but they still finished only 3-15 (9-22 overall).
They have a new challenge they didn’t have when Leitao built them up: they’re not the only basketball team in town. Northwestern’s Chris Collins got them to the NCAA tournament, for the first time ever, after a few previous hot pre-seasons.
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