In late August, when the Mobile City Council and Mayor Sam Jones first toured the $2.5-million addition to Ladd-Peebles Stadium, including 11 new skyboxes, District 6 Councilwoman Connie Hudson said she was surprised to hear the city council would have a suite separate from the mayor’s, which is located just between the 40- and 50-yard lines.
“It was announced to me on the day we toured,” Hudson said. “We’ve always shared, like we do with the Baybears.”
The 11 new skyboxes bring the total at city-owned Ladd-Peebles Stadium up to 14, as three were built in 1997 in part of the press box addition. In addition to the two skyboxes available to the city, the Mobile County Commission also has a suite, which brings the total of skyboxes for local government use to three, or 21 percent of the skyboxes in the 61-year-old stadium.
Speaking generally, and taking into consideration the differences between facilities in other cities, Bud Ratliff of the Mobile Bay Sports Authority says most stadiums have only two skyboxes reserved for city and county use, but doesn’t see a problem with the current arrangement at Ladd-Peebles.
Story here. Consider a new stadium built in a city. When measuring the economic benefits generated by the stadium, remember to keep the analysis at the margin. That is, what would the city be like without the stadium, holding all else constant? You'd need to measure the marginal employment (usually shown in studies to be zero), the marginal income (zero), the marginal wages (zero), the money and consumption benefits flowing to team owners (positive - you think Jerry Jones doesn't enjoy his box seat at the Palace near Dallas?), as well as the money flowing to landowners around the stadium (positive). And don't forget the public choice component: the consumption benefits flowing to politicians (not to mention the campaign contributions - what are those anyways, really, he asks sarcastically?). Public choice indeed is an important tool to use in accounting for the "economic impact" of a stadium and in understanding why, after study after study after study shows that stadiums don't lead to economic development, politicians still push for them.
Lastly keep in mind those ex-ante studies - the before-the-fact studies - that claim a new stadium will be worth millions of dollars in economic development. Those documents almost always present estimates not backed up by ex post (after the fact) studies. The ex post studies are often (but not always) performed independently by people with no dog in the fight. The ex-ante studies, on the other hand, are produced for or by people with an interest in the outcome. The anecdotal evidence suggests that at least in this case, some of those people are the politicians who will vote on using other people's money at least partly on themselves.