Capital Spending

Washington, D.C.'s new baseball park is on schedule to open in time for the 2008 season. The stadium, built along the Anacostia River, is to be the final piece of the puzzle that drew the Montreal Expos to the nation's capital in 2005. According to an Associated Press report today, team officials are excited about a unique feature of the new park. Nationals President Stan Kasten said of the cherry blossoms to be placed beyond the left field bleachers, "We couldn't find another ballpark that had trees in the ballpark."

Aesthetically speaking, ballparks can be beautiful things. Here are some pictures from Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Chicago, to make the point:

Nevertheless, Washington, D.C. is just the latest city in North America to promise its citizens the excitement of a professional sports franchise and then stick them with the bill to build a new facility (trees or no trees). The last stadium to be built entirely with private funds was Dodger Stadium, completed in 1962. Today, private team owners regularly reach deals with Major League Baseball and local municipalities that require taxpayers to fund the majority of construction costs. In the past decade, this has happened in Milwaukee, Seattle, Philadelphia and several other cities.

In the case of D.C., when MLB moved the Expos it did so with the knowledge that mayor Anthony Williams agreed to fund, for the first time ever, 100 percent of the cost to construct a new ballpark. One anonymous MLB executive called it, "the sweetest of sweetheart deals." Originally projected to cost around $440 million, estimates have climbed as high as $714 million.

Today's article indicates an agreement for the city to pay up to $611 million of construction costs. Lost in all of the talk about cherry blossoms and "glass, brick, and limestone," is that Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, remains one of the most impoverished urban centers in America. Although city officials have justified their expenditure by claiming it will create jobs and spark a neighborhood revival, the overwhelming majority of independent evidence on the subject suggests it will fail to substantively affect the local economy. Perhaps the most noted author on the subject, Andrew Zimbalist, writes that "economic studies have shown that most public stadiums and arenas do not cover their own fixed and operating costs." That hasn't stopped countless city governments from investing millions of dollars in so-called sports-entertainment districts that provide amusement for visitors but over-burden actual residents.

That's the most unfortunate part of this issue. The city deploys a rhetoric of urban renewal and ecomomic progress yet constructs a stadium that the overwhelming majority of its residents will never be able to afford. Washington, D.C. is in desperate need of infrastructure repair, new schools and hospitals, better law enforcement, and more places to gather and play as a community. Instead, residents can look forward to a brand new testament to capital spending. Well, at least the new ballpark will have some trees.