Like many kids, I grew up loving sports. I still remember the Miami Dolphins losing a heartbreaking Super Bowl XVII game to the Washington Redskins and then Dan Marino taking over the following year to become the hero my friends and I adored watching. So with enough new stadiums in the South Florida area, I cringed at Sunday's story in the Tampa Tribune. Front page news? Hardly.
What were the editors smoking? The Tampa Bay area does NOT need another publicly funded stadium, which was I'm sure the angle the Devil Rays would pursue.
They are a horrible baseball team with horrible staff (on Cinco de Mayo, the employees took all the sombrero giveaways so only a few of the paying customers could wear) in a horrible stadium. It is time for the public to stop funding these boondogle stadium construction projects to help feed the coffers of rich owners of sports teams and the players who play for them.
I do not know enough about the sales tax increase in Hillsborough County that supported the construction of Raymond James Stadium, but I do know the craziness that ensued in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area when both the Miami Heat (pro basketball) and the Florida Panthers (hockey) wanted a new place to play.
The Miami Arena was a perfectly fine place for both to play but whoever built that facility in 1988 forgot to include luxury skyboxes. So...not only did Broward County build a huge arena for the Panthers, but Miami-Dade County built a similarly huge American Airlines Arena in downtown Miami--prime property that could have gone to so many other better projects. One arena was enough, and, in an era where so many complain about huge property taxes, our tax dollars would be better spent in areas other than a new baseball stadium.
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