No marching/happy feet/lame-penguin-movie joke for the Pittsburgh Penguins

For those of you living in western Pennsylvania and not under a rock this week, you know that the Pittsburgh Penguins recently consummated a new arena deal with our oh-so-enlightened Governor and local leaders that will build a new multi-purpose facility for the city, region and my favorite hockey team.

While in Luke's perfect world, government money would not go to such projects (or to the Comcast building in Philadelphia, PNC's new building in Pittsburgh, etc.), in the rather backassward world of sports, I am reasonably happy about this, and not just as a rabid hockey fan.

To be blunt, if there's a sports facility that _should_ be partially publicly financed, an arena is it. In Pittsburgh, we have PNC Park which is used probably 85 days a year, mostly for the poor excuse for an MLB franchise, the Pirates. It gets very little use, other than that. Heinz Field is even worse. The Steelers play their 8 home games, Pitt plays 5 or 6 home dates and there may be a concert or three in the summer. That's 17 dates. All year.

Arenas, meanwhile, should have events 200-250 nights a year (Hockey w/out playoffs would only take up 41-45 dates.) Well-managed arenas in vibrant markets can have over 300. That's a LOT of parking revenue, restaurant/bar visits and activity over the course of a year. Far more than stand-alone baseball or football stadiums.

That alone, from an economic/philosophical standpoint, makes this deal pretty damn good in my eyes. Throw in that state money that was appropriated for capital projects would just be used elsewhere and that the slots licensee, whomever that turns out to be, is chipping in a lot of the cost AND that the Pens themselves are shelling out serious dough and I feel that it's a fair deal for all sides.

I also like the incentive clause written in for the Penguins to redevelop the former Mellon Arena site once it is demolished. This is key because when Three Rivers Stadium was built in 1970, the Pirates and Steelers did not have any incentive to develop the surrounding parking lots. Think about it; if people are coming to see your team play, would you want them drinking beer or eating outside the stadium? And would you want to make it more difficult to park? I think not. Adding incentives to the Steelers and Pirates stadium deals _has_ paid dividends. As much as I HATE to admit the idiots who run Pittsburgh actually did something right, they did a good job with this important detail and I expect similar development success with the former arena site.

While this is all well and good, philosophically I _do_ disagree with state/local funding of stadium projects. Unfortunately, it will most likely take an act of Congress to stop this activity. There will always be a city seeking to boost its profile by trying to attract professional sports and until limits or caps are placed on funding of arenas/stadiums using tax dollars, this activity will most likely intensify. Especially in 10-15 years as the facilities built during the 1990s building boom start to become "obsolete."

That's my two cents on the long-awaited arena deal. Now I can start blogging about hockey and everything else without worrying that my favorite team (yeah I like hockey a little more than football) will skip town.