Legal Commentary

Suspending reality on financing the soccer stadium

By Tom Kirkendall

Look, I realize that the reasoning for public financing for the proposed Houston Dynamo soccer stadium not been particularly rational. But this Chronicle article takes the cake in terms of suspending reality. Reporters Bernando Fallas and Bill Murphy breathlessly report that financially-troubled Texas Southern University -- which is currently seeking $40 million in emergency legislative funding simply to keep the lights on -- is a serious player to make up at least a portion of the gap between the private and public financing on the deal:

Forget soccer-specific. The Dynamo would be thrilled to call their proposed stadium football-specific or even fútbol-specific.

Either way would be accurate — soccer is known as football almost everywhere else in the world — if the Dynamo can get Texas Southern University to join negotiations with the city of Houston toward the construction of a $105 million facility just east of downtown that would be home to the two-time defending MLS champions and TSU athletics, primarily the Tigers' football team.

By the looks of things, TSU is prepared to do just that.

Two weeks after he first expressed interest in the project and a couple of meetings and phone conversations later, newly appointed TSU athletic director Charles McClelland said the school is willing to invest in the construction of the 22,000-capacity stadium in exchange for the rights to use it. [.  .  .]

Of course, the article is utterly devoid of details, such as how TSU is going to find any money to throw at this deal, much less make a multi-million dollar investment in it. Heck, the TSU athletic director and the Dynamo's president haven't even met yet, so it doesn't even appear that Dynamo management takes TSU's involvement seriously. Why don't the Chronicle editors just come out and say that they really want the city to finance the downtown soccer stadium and spare us such vapid articles as this one?

Meanwhile, J.R. Taylor over at PoliSci@UST runs circles around the Chronicle's reporting on the soccer stadium financing with this well-reasoned post that actually addresses facts regarding public financing of stadiums. Yet another example of how the blogosphere is trumping the mainstream media in terms of providing coherent analysis of important issues.

Full post as published by Houston's Clear Thinkers on May 09, 2008 (boomark / email).