It appears to be that time of the year. It’s apparently time to hear the ownership group of the St. Louis Cardinals gently ask for taxpayer money to upgrade their home ballpark, Busch Stadium. This week, Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III announced that “at some point soon major renovations will need to happen.” What exactly will be upgraded? Or needs to be fixed? It’s “not yet clear.” Yet, as KMOV wrote recently, other MLB teams are upgrading their “video boards, improved concessions, and infrastructure upgrades.”
Last year, we found out that the Cardinals wanted “public funding” as well. It was for ballpark upgrades to ensure that the team could stay financially “viable.” But last year, the Cardinals somewhat put a number on what they were thinking by mentioning two other MLB teams that upgraded their ballparks for around $500 million each.
Unlike past years, the owners of the Cardinals do have one advantage in asking for taxpayer money this time. This year, Missouri lawmakers made some modifications to their laws in the desperate hope of keeping both the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs in the state. A team like the Cardinals can attach themselves to this new law that “allows up to 50 percent of state funding for stadium upgrades.”
Is this common for these owners? Let’s look into it. The history of the Cardinals asking for taxpayer money is quite long and not very well known. First off, the Cardinals consistently tell the media that Busch Stadium was privately financed. The Cardinals claim that they paid for 90% of the ballpark’s $400M cost. Their MLB website states that the construction of Busch Stadium “involved little public money.” But it wasn’t entirely privately funded.
NextSTL wrote a piece that describes how taxpayers did in fact give many millions to the creation of Busch Stadium through a 25-year real estate tax abatement worth roughly $20 million, a $45 million loan from St. Louis County costing $110 million of taxpayer dollars, $29.45 million in tax credits from the state of Missouri, and $12 million in funds from the Missouri Department of Transportation. The elimination of the 5% amusement tax that would have created many millions is NOT even factored into this.
STLPR wrote a story last year showing how the DeWitt family had asked “several times” for taxpayer money to upgrade their venue. When the current ownership group bought the team in 1995, it took them not even 24 months before they were “lobbying for public money” and wondering out loud whether taxpayers should “build a new (ballpark) for the team to remain competitive.”
I loved how the ownership group hired a lobbyist who had no problem telling the St. Louis Dispatch that “in the long run the public is more capable of handling the burden of providing” a new ballpark.
What happens if the team doesn’t get taxpayer money? Well, the Cardinals have admitted that if they were forced to pay for their own expenses, “they would have to slash payroll and raise ticket prices.” As the St. Louis FanSided website wrote, considering this ownership group is the 7th wealthiest among MLB owners, why on earth are they not paying for these upgrades with their own money?
The team has threatened to move several times. In 2002, they threatened to relocate to a “ballpark site in Illinois” if they didn’t get taxpayer money. When that didn’t work, the Cardinals then publicly admitted to being “actively courted” by several other counties that were offering their own ballpark proposals.
If we look at the DeWitt family specifically, before they bought the Cardinals, they were part owners of the Cincinnati Reds and then the Texas Rangers. They threatened to relocate while partly owning both teams.
When DeWitt Jr. partly owned the Cincinnati Reds, the team threatened to relocate unless a new ballpark was built by taxpayers. The city caved, and all the revenue that the city was supposed to get from the new ballpark never came anywhere close to being a reality.
When DeWitt Jr. partly owned the Texas Rangers, the team yet again threatened the local government that they would relocate without significant taxpayer money. The city caved, and a new ballpark was built by taxpayers.
Let’s move up to today. Guess what DeWitt II wants? Busch Stadium needs a “significant capital infusion” in the upcoming years at the latest. My guess is that he will get something substantial around the $500 million mark. I don’t think they should but I am just stating that I don’t think local leaders would stop them from taking this amount of taxpayer money. The spin would probably just be that the Cardinals are taking just $500M instead of $2B for a new ballpark.
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