The Chiefs and the City of Peoria in the downtown stadium may have started as a marriage of convenience, but at its 10-year anniversary, the relationship seems to be enduring.
Instead of the honeymoon being over, ongoing operations and the return of the St. Louis Cardinals affiliation looks like a second honeymoon.
A “honeymoon effect” between a city and a professional sports team usually lasts about ten years, according to a recent study of the economic impact of minor-league ball clubs and ballparks on communities –which shows no significant effect on per capita income from the arrival of a low-A minor league team or a low-A stadium (like the Chiefs’ Midwest League). However, there’s no negative effect either.
The Chiefs/Peoria private/public partnership for the 7,000-seat stadium has proven to be a lasting bond, benefiting as much from the private interest as much as the public help, according to Kip McCoy, Chief Operating Officer of Heartland Partnership.
“Any time a community like Peoria has people willing to invest in a project in a downtown that hasn’t seen a lot of investment, that’s important,” McCoy said. “It was something new, so you have to give everybody kudos for trying this.
“Also, things like this show a community can be about more than one industry, one company or one location,” he said.
Balancing the benefits and burdens of civic and commercial interests is best, but popular support is required, too, of course, which is why a “honeymoon” can be tracked.
The study, “The Economic Impact of Stadiums and Teams: The Case of Minor League Baseball” in the Journal of Sports Economics, defines a team/town honeymoon as showing “the additional newness effect that often generates fanfare, interest and attendance beyond the mere presence of the team.
“Minor league fans and even the general public may be driven to these parks for several years out of curiosity, popularity and word of mouth,” says the study, written by the University of San Francisco’s Nola Agha, who used an extensive and distinctive data set from 26 years of statistics to examine the efficiency of government assistance to minor league baseball teams and stadiums by measuring fiscal gains in local economies.
The study found that:
* the presence of certain types of minor league teams and new stadiums may increase per capita income in a community, but modestly at best,
* no significant positive effect at all was found for the introduction of a team or stadium in a low-A league, and
* overall, there were no significant negative income effects associated with any team or stadium type either. In other words, where the measurable impact was not positive, it was neutral and not statistically significant.
“To be clear, teams and stadiums in the majority of classifications [levels] have insignificant effects on per capita income,” Agha writes. “There are no significant negative effects. All of the significant results are positive.
“What is distinctive about these results is the acknowledgement that perhaps fundamental differences in the business structure of sports can result in dramatic changes in the ability of sports teams to affect their local economies,” she adds.
The business structure of the Chiefs means people to answer to besides fans and local government, according to Chiefs president Rocky Vonachen.
“It’s been a struggle sometimes, especially with the economy like it’s been,” said Vonachen, talking the day he announced the return of the Cardinals as the Chiefs’ major-league affiliate.
“We’re always looking for ways to raise revenues,” he continued. “It’s about selling tickets, putting butts in the seats.”
But success also is measured in ways other than attendance and per capita income – beyond the dollar, he added.
“The stadium has been worth it to central Illinois and the quality of life here,” Vonachen said. “Since the early ’80s when Dad [Chiefs patriarch Pete Vonachen] got professional baseball going again here, it’s always been the goal to provide good, affordable family entertainment to make it better to live, work and play here – as much as the Civic Center, the symphony and so on. It’s a great way to spend a nice summer night.”
Ten years ago there was considerable skepticism when the downtown stadium idea came up, remembers PGAV Planners, a consulting firm active in downtown revitalization and similar projects throughout Illinois.
But with such guidance, the City Council created a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district and approved the stadium’s location.
The TIF approach boosted the stadium real estate from an Equalized Assessed Valuation of about $400,000 to more than $4 million by 2010, according to city records. Its fair market value has been estimated at more than $11 million. Other markets have offered subsidies or even assumed ownership of a stadium as city or park district property in a sports version of the increasingly common strategy of corporations pressuring communities to come up with incentives worth millions to locate there, in a sort of bidding competition. But in Peoria, the city avoided the financial blackmail like the state of Illinois and city of Chicago faced in 1988, when the White Sox threatened to move to Florida unless government built owners a new stadium, saving the Sox some $60 million.
Maneuvers like that very rarely result in widespread economic growth and more jobs, which Peter Fisher of the Iowa Policy Project called “a case of private gain at public loss. At a time when state budgets have huge holes in them, our infrastructure is deteriorated, we’re laying off some public workers and cutting the pensions of others,” state and local government spending money on corporate subsidies “has hardly been a part of the conversation at all.”
Peoria and the Chiefs avoided that dilemma, and now, with a decade of hindsight, PGAV reports, “Unlike most other communities, the resulting new stadium facility remained privately owned. The city now has a new public attraction in downtown, without the long-term financial liability of owning and operating a major public facility.”
Vonachen, musing about the soon-to-open Riverfront Museum and Caterpillar Visitors Center, said the Chiefs stadium helps area employers, too.
“Whether it’s Caterpillar or one of our medical centers looking to recruit good employees, they can point to the stadium as one of many things to do if someone comes here,” he said. “It’s a good tool.”