Field of Schemes new post Chicago Fire stadium leaves Bridgeview taxpayers "kicked in the teeth"

It's not very often that I get five readers emailing me about the same article — but then, it's not very often that a major U.S. daily newspaper runs an article about a stadium deal with a headline that features the phrase "kicks taxpayers in the teeth". From Saturday's Chicago Tribune:

The hulking, red-brick Toyota Park rises impressively from the side of gritty Harlem Avenue, its canopies jutting into the sky. The village-owned stadium is not only home to the Chicago Fire, but also hosts major music shows.

And since opening in 2006, it has come up millions of dollars short of making its huge debt payments. The yearly shortfalls are sometimes as big as the town's annual police budget, and they've helped sink the southwest suburb's credit rating to among the Chicago area's worst.

This for a deal that — initially, at least — looked like it might actually work out for the town of Bridgeview, since taxpayers' $100 million in stadium bonds were supposed to be paid off by stadium revenues. Except that, according to the Tribune, "the final deal called for much of the revenue from soccer games to go to the Chicago Fire, leaving Bridgeview with as much as a $23 million budget hole over the stadium's first five years — one that could ultimately have to be filled by raising property taxes.

This is why it's so vitally important who's on the hook for stadium costs if revenue projections don't work out — and why it's crucial in Seattle that prospective arena builder Chris Hansen is actually agreeing to increase rent payments to cover any shortfall in arena revenues.

Bridgeview, though, didn't get the Fire owners to agree to such a provision, so now they're getting, well, kicked in the teeth. Not so much, though, the Bridgeview elected officials who approved the deal, who've gotten to hand out millions of dollars worth of contracts to favored businesses, as well as use the stadium for fundraisers and enjoy a city-owned luxury suite for watching Jimmy Buffett concerts. If "enjoy" is the right word, that is.

from Field of Schemes http://www.fieldofschemes.com/news/archives/2012/06/4979_chicago_fire_st.html