We have an easy answer for Pittsburgh's current financial crisis: Build more stadiums.
Stadiums, after all, bring huge economic benefits. They bring thousands upon thousands of new entertainment dollars into a city; they help revitalize downtown areas by attracting new businesses; and they jump-start tourism by bringing scores of visitors to the area.
At least those were the arguments made by stadium proponents back in the mid-1990s when Heinz Field and PNC Park were just a gleam in Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy's eyes. The stadiums, we were told, were going to give the Pirates the financial base to become competitive again and keep the Steelers happy for the foreseeable future.
State and city officials were so taken with these promises that they agreed to allocate millions of dollars in public money to help the Pirates and Steelers construct the new facilities.
Now, fast forward to today. The city of Pittsburgh is so broke -- with a $60 million deficit -- that it recently laid off 17 percent of its work force. The state of Pennsylvania is so broke that Gov. Ed Rendell called for a series of tax hikes almost immediately upon taking office. And the Pirates are so broke that they have started another rebuilding project, sending nearly every moderate- to high-salaried player out of town while getting little in return.
PNC Park may be beautiful, but all those rows of empty seats don't look much better than the ones at Three Rivers Stadium used to. The Pirates are averaging 20,939 fans per game, down about 10 percent from last year's average of 23,148, which was significantly less than the average of 30,834 in PNC Park's first year.
Clearly the park's novelty is wearing off, and once that happens, what else do the Pirates have to sell⢠How many people are going to pay high ticket prices, high parking prices and shockingly high concession prices next year to watch Tike Redman, Humberto Cota and a bunch of other unknowns rack up a 12th consecutive losing seasonâ¢
Team owner Kevin McClatchy is claiming the moves are necessary because of $30 million in losses over the past three seasons. If the team can't be profitable even in PNC Park, then it has problems that are too big for a new stadium to solve. The city of Pittsburgh should take a serious look at what it will do with PNC Park if the Pirates ever leave town.
The Steelers, of course, are much more competitive and more popular with their fan base, but that has little to do with Heinz Field.
Someone should have said no to the Pirates and Steelers when they issued their stadium demands -- and, in fact, somebody did. In November of 1997, voters overwhelmingly rejected the Regional Renaissance Initiative, which would have boosted the state's sales tax by .5 percent to finance the stadiums as well as the expansion of Pittsburgh's convention center.
However, city officials came up with "Plan B," which set aside several streams of public revenue to be used for stadium construction.
What have we gotten for our money⢠Two nice stadiums, for sure, but severe financial problems at the city and state level, while the Pirates and Steelers are in just about the same positions as they were 10 years ago.
The lesson to be learned is that the panacea promised by the pro-stadium advocates didn't come true. Any benefits from entertainment spending, tourism and related development have been negligible.
Keep that in mind when the governor talks about saving the state with gambling revenue.
