Northwest Herald Roots for Baseball Stadium Facts

But not too deeply.

I was hoping the NW Herald would root out some of the duplicity and secret documents involved in the McHenry County College baseball stadium proposal.

The free enterprise Heartland Institute’s Steve Stanek, a resident of McHenry and former reporter who covered McHenry County, has been trying to the get the dominant newspaper in McHenry County to focus on the financial angle of the baseball stadium for weeks.

Apparently he finally got through to someone.

Stanek is the main person quoted in Reagan Foster’s front page Sunday article entitled,

Root, root, root for the stadium?

The subhead is

Economist divided on public dollars being sued for sports arena

Interestingly enough, the headline the online edition more honestly reflects the contents of the story than does the subhead above. The internet edition reads,

Economists question
stadium plan

The fact is, the NW Herald could not find an economist who pointed to a successful publicly owned and subsidized baseball stadium.

Northern Illinois University Associate Professor of Public Administration Michael Peddle, whom the NW Herald reports has a Ph.D. in economics, says he “think(s)” that “minor league sports have been…much more successful than a lot of people would have guessed ahead of time.”

But, he doesn’t name any and doesn’t even say that any were “successful”—just “much more successful than a lot of people would have guessed ahead of time.

Not an opinion upon which I’d base $10 million in debt (plus the high, non-tax free interest over 20 years).

And I remember MCC’s reply to my Freedom of Information request for

“copies and citations of any scholarly articles that back up the assertion that baseball stadiums can make money for a local government.”

The college’s response was

“The college asserts that there are no documents responsive to your request.”

Frankly, I think MCC knows more about the subject than the NIU professor. If they could have found one, they would have provided it.

The best the professor can come up with is

“there are a number of times this has been done that it has been pretty self-sufficient. The 20 years’ [agreement] thing makes me a little bit nervous, but let’s just say I don’t find the claims to be incredible.”

“Pretty self-sufficient.”

He’s worried about the 20 year agreement length.

How reassuring.

If that is the most rousing endorsement that someone can find from an economist whose credentials beyond an econ doctorate are not mentioned, I’d say look at the article going up on McHenry County Blog tomorrow. It is from a Harvard University professor.

To her credit, reporter Regan Foster points out–twice–that McHenry County College refuses to release the September 27, 2006, no-bid feasibility study upon which the stadium proposal is based and which MCC taxpayers paid Mark Houser’s Equity One $70,000 to produce.

That document signed by MCC President Walt Packard also guaranteed Houser

”At the completion of the feasibility study and independent review, if the College elects to proceed with the project, the College will contract with EquityOne or it’s (sic) assigns to develop the project on the College’s behalf.”

This self-serving and, therefore, tainted study turned out to be worth another no-bid contract–this one for $400,000–to Houser and, I believe, a way to hide details of the construction project from the public. He is being paid on that $400,000 contract, even though zoning approval has not yet occurred.

Houser’s buddy, baseball promoter Pete Heitman says the numbers weren’t “pulled out of the sky.”

“They were evaluated and massaged, and we feel really comfortable we can meet those numbers.”

Regardless of their source and manipulation, the projections and their underlining assumptions have never been evaluated by any sports economist to find out if the benefits of the stadium will outweigh its costs.

McHenry County College dares not do that.

The odds are overwhelming that such a review would spotlight problems with Heitman’s proposal.

All the college has to say for itself in Sunday’s article is that the media had concentrated only on the baseball stadium.

After McHenry County Blog revealed on March 12, 2007, that a baseball stadium was being considered, the next day the NW Herald ran a front page story the next day on the topic.

Naughty Northwest Herald.

Reporting the news that MCC had kept secret since sometime last fall, I guess. (Officials refuse to tell me when the baseball stadium first made a revised master plan.)

The first commenter under the Sunday Northwest Herald story says,

“The Cash Flow Analysis Prepared by EquityOne Sports Development (MCC’s partner in the project) has been released.

“It shows a TOTAL NET LOSS of $1,881,878 after year 5 and a TOTAL NET LOSS of $696,554 after year 10.

“Do the taxpayers or the students pay for those losses?”

Very in-ter-est-ing.

There’s another story promised for tomorrow’s NW Herald:

“Read what representatives of the Frontier League have to say about McHenry County’s proposed Health, Wellness and Athletic Complex”

Now there’s a neutral source.

Talk about giving the tax eaters a home court advantage. The NW Herald doesn’t even give “day before the election” favorable coverage to its favorite political candidates who are in trouble.

I’ve been told the Frontier League gets a $300,000 franchise fee, if the deal goes through. (If that’s wrong, please let me know how much the league gets paid, initially, and each year thereafter.)

Commissioner Bill Lee ducked out the back door of the MCC board room the night the first pitch was made. Three reporters were waiting outside of the door he entered. He also ducked his head as I was taking his photo entering the board room. That’s a smiling Heitman on the left.

Finally, anyone want to bet against there being a NW Herald editorial on Tuesday endorsing the city council’s approval of the baseball stadium?


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