Public spending on entertainment business palaces mostly exchange local citizen spending on one activity for local spending on sports entertainment. They do not bring much outside money – they just shift local spending around. The 4,500 jobs allegedly created are almost entirely low wage service jobs.
There’s not much that is fundamentally wrong with Moda Center – but the rich people want to build out more high end luxury suites and amenities for rich people – by taxing the working class in Oregon and Portland – in a city whose downtown core is among the highest occupancy vacancy rates in the nation, in a city that has discussed laying off firefighters, police and teachers. They can’t run what they already have – and may be if they had not blown up $450 million on the Cover Oregon fiasco a decade ago (it never enrolled anyone) they could have afforded this.
The city had been proposing taking $75 million of their “climate change” tax money to fund part of the $600 million sports palace. Because climate change is so last year.
So we get this: [Billionaire Trail Blazers owner says taxpayers must cover entire Moda Center makeover – oregonlive.com
