David Michael Miller
It is the most common thing in the world for the civic infrastructure of a city to come together behind some big building project. That happened in the 1950s and 1960s, when most American cities actually fought for Interstate Highways to tear right through the middle of their downtowns because they thought they needed those freeways to compete with the suburbs.
It happened in Madison with Monona Terrace and the Edgewater. It happened in Milwaukee with Miller Park and in Green Bay with Lambeau Field.
Typically, the business community, represented by the local Chamber of Commerce, the newspaper editorial boards and all of the other formal and informal parts of the local power structure, rally behind the big bricks-and-mortar project. It quickly assumes the status of not just a building, but a marker for progress and community pride.
That is the only way to explain why local leaders carry on these battles, as they are usually unpopular with the masses. In the case of the Bucks arena, two out of three people in the Milwaukee Metro area oppose it. Even the Lambeau Field renovation passed a public referendum in Brown County by a relatively narrow margin.
The public intuitively understands that these big, expensive projects aren’t necessarily in their best interests. What citizens usually want is just good schools, clean parks, streets without potholes, safe public areas, that kind of basic stuff. It’s usually the local movers and shakers — who live in neighborhoods where all those basics are assured – who get excited about the big building project.
This partially explains why the big, expensive Judge Doyle Square project in downtown Madison has been bogged down for so long. The city’s influential leaders want it, but the public is less excited. (I think it would have a better shot at public acceptance if the public market had been kept as a component of the project because it would have given average Madisonians a sense that this was for them as well.)
Which brings us to the city of Boston, which recently told Olympic organizers that it wouldn’t have its taxpayers guarantee any cost overruns if the city was chosen as the venue for the 2024 Olympics. The U.S. Olympic Committee promptly dropped the city for consideration as America’s choice to be put forward to the International Olympic Committee.
Good for Boston. Let’s hope more cities follow its lead and just say no when huge, rich sports businesses come demanding a big public subsidy they don’t need. That irrational but strong sense of local boosterism is too often exploited by greedy sports executives — whether in the IOC, FIFA, the NBA, NFL or Major League Baseball — to reap enormous profits at the expense of local taxpayers.
Now, with the state Legislature’s approval of the Bucks’ arena deal, that is almost certainly what will happen in Milwaukee. Only local approvals — but, no public referendum — are needed before the cash and property get handed over.
Keeping an NBA team will do nothing to put Milwaukee on the map. Twenty-nine other cities already have a team and all of the cities larger than Milwaukee without a professional basketball team (San Jose, Austin, Jacksonville, San Diego, Columbus, Fort Worth, El Paso, Seattle, Nashville, Las Vegas and Louisville) have lower poverty rates and higher growth rates. Moreover, academic studies on the topic overwhelmingly conclude that there is no community economic benefit to justify public subsidies to sports complexes.
To make things worse the owners almost never actually need the public money. They demand it because they know they can get it and local officials hand it over because they think — all evidence to the contrary — that it’s somehow necessary for progress.
So, it isn’t the city that does what’s expected that will get noticed; it’s the city that does the really bold, progressive thing that will attract attention. Boston said no to the Olympics, which in turn sends all the right signals about where that community’s values lie.
Milwaukee’s real opportunity here was to stand out by being so self-assured that it could tell the NBA and the Bucks’ owners to pay for their own sports palace or take a hike. I understand the pressure of civic pride that seemingly forced them in the direction of compliance with the owners’ and the league’s demands, but I wished they had been more like Boston.
