Thursday, May 05, 2011

Public parks vs. pro sports stadiums

Charles Maldonado recently wrote one of the more important stories on the Metro budget that you will read from a local news source, but I want to draw one particular lop-sided comparison from his excellent article:

The land under LP Field was valued at $6.3 million at the beginning of the last decade, according to Metro Property Assessor records. It’s gone up to $6.9 million, an increase, but only 10 percent ....

On the other hand, the value of Riverfront Park went from $6.3 million to $23 million between 2005 and 2009. The largest individual infrastructure expense there was the $2.3 million station for the Regional Transit Authority’s commuter rail line the Music City Star, installed there in 2009.

Maintaining and improving public infrastructure that serves the broadest swath of Nashvillians is at least as important as serving the constrained and special interests of pro sports consumers. In this case, sustaining Riverfront Park has been a greater return for Nashville on property value than keeping up LP Field has.

4 comments:

  1. Oh, a tad embarrassing. You've highlighted a part of the article that has a minor error. Actually, I'm glad you did or I might not have noticed it. Riverfront was installed in 2006, not 2009. My fault.

    In any case, many thanks again for the nice things you've said about the article.

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  2. Does the land under LP Field belong to Metro or Bud Adams?

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  3. Metro owns and operates LP Field

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  4. I was just wondering if there were any tax implications for Bud Adams, hence the relatively low increase in the value of the property. It just seems strange that the riverfront value would jump so high in comparison. Maybe I'm missing something.

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