And we are not talking a chopper ride, either.
"Stadium weighs down a N.J. town; Debt incurred will result to firings" by Romy Varghese, Bloomberg News / June 19, 2011
HARRISON, N.J. — On a May evening, soccer fans streamed down a sidewalk lined with posters depicting cafes and parks that don’t exist. They were headed to the $200 million Red Bulls Arena, which rises above warehouses and industrial wreckage that were to become condos for New York City commuters and transform the town.
Harrison predicted that redevelopment revenue would cover its $39 million debt to buy and clean up land under the stadium for the Major League Soccer team owned by Dietrich Mateschitz, billionaire founder of the namesake energy-drink company. Instead, most construction projects haven’t begun. The community, across the Passaic River from Newark with a per-capita income 69 percent of the state average, had its credit rating slashed and is firing police and firefighters.
“The numbers didn’t make any sense; the economics didn’t make any sense,’’ said George Zoffinger, who criticized the deal in 2006 as president of the New Jersey Sports & Exposition Authority, a state agency that runs sporting and entertainment complexes. “Now the taxpayers are going to pay.’’
What else is new?
Larger communities have been stung, too: The recession undermined the finances of stadium deals in Houston and Cincinnati. Harrison, a town of 14,000, spent years wooing a soccer team, only to see its prize become a burden.
The town has no “long-term solution’’ for its debt load, Moody’s Investors Service said in a May 20 ratings report....
Town officials in December had to borrow $3.1 million — 21 percent of its municipal tax collections — to make the debt payment on the 2006 issue, and they anticipate doing so again this December, Moody’s said.
Borrowing from Peter to pay.... Peter?
Meanwhile, the New York Red Bulls, whose owner is No. 208 on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s billionaires, are challenging their taxable status. The team refuses to pay a $1.4 million property levy, according to Moody’s....
Money addicts are the sickest slime on the face of this earth.
Because of its 20-minute train ride from Wall Street, town leaders envisioned the community, which the census says is 44 percent Hispanic or Latino, as a lower-cost home for New York City professionals. They saw how the waterfronts in Hoboken and Jersey City attracted such commuters, although Harrison’s skyline view is of the Passaic and Newark, not the Hudson River and Manhattan’s towers.
Three of which would no longer be visible.
That was a kick to us all.
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