I'd like to see them prove the revenue numbers, not just publish them in a liberal POS paper that I wouldn't even let a dog take a dump on.
Spot on. All the BS that Mitch floated about being a "big league town" was just that, BS. The school system is crap, the roads are crap, the jobs are crap. So if you have a nice size business, and you're looking to relocate and bring some good jobs, and somebody says OKC? Well your kids will grow up stupid, unless you home, or private school, you'll tear the frontend out of your car just trying to get to work, the city itself looks like sh*t, but we have the Thunder, and maybe you won't get shot after the game. Yeah, they can't even spell big league.
Think one of the team owners is worth over a billion. With that much money a 50 million loss (his portion won't be near as much) he can definately afford the loss without consequence.
Lastly, they moved from Washington state to here, what other states would welcome them after this, they have a reputation for no commitments. Many fans will leave and to get people to watch them with a new name it will cost them a fortune.
I honestly doubt it. The NRA is down on numbers, losing almost a million over the past few years. Theyre broke, as shown with some of their recent credit lines they have taken out. I am willing to bet they would require the city to pay them to come here. While I think we should try to get all the conventions, I dont think some of them will be a lucrative as others.
I don't understand how suddenly politics play into this?
Here you go. The study, put together by a research/business consultant firm in Arizona. But I know many won't even read it, so I'll summarize what's in it.
-Oklahoma City is proposing to build a new arena that would host Oklahoma City Thunder games and other events
-This new arena would replace Paycom Center where the Oklahoma City Thunder has played since they moved to Oklahoma in 2008
I-n 2022-23, Paycom Center hosted 43 Thunder home games, 23 Oklahoma City Blue home games and 47 other ticketed events including concerts and other sporting events
-Attendance at Oklahoma City Thunder games and other events has largely rebounded from the pandemic with close to 1.1 million people attending events at Paycom Center in 2022-23, and average attendance at Oklahoma City Thunder games is continuing to increase 2023-24.
-This analysis provides a framework for understanding the economic and tax impacts that the arena supports using information provided by ASM Global and the Oklahoma City Thunder. The report includes the continuing economic impacts of jobs supported by the operations of the arena and the Oklahoma City Thunder, visitor spending outside the arena, and tax revenues from visitors and employees.
-All total, the arena supports an estimated annual economic impact of $590.0 million in Oklahoma City.
-Paycom Center currently hosts 114 events per year. The number of ticketed third-party events could increase. The operations of the arena and the operations of the Oklahoma City Thunder support an annual economic impact of $513.0 million, directly and indirectly supporting close to 2,500 jobs and $273.8 million in annual labor income.
-With a total of about 472,900 non-local visitor days per year for basketball games and ticketed thirdparty events, the arena supports an estimated $45.5 million in annual visitor expenditures outside the arena for lodging, food, retail and local transportation. This level of visitor generates an induced economic impact of $77.0 million per year, supporting 795 jobs at local businesses.
-The estimated construction cost for a new arena is $900.5 million, including $693.0 million in hard costs that create local economic impacts. The estimated economic impact of construction could total $1.3 billion, supporting over 10,000 jobs during the construction period.
-In addition to these economic impacts, local spending by ticketed event attendees in the arena and outside the arena, as well as household spending by arena staff, Oklahoma City Thunder players and staff, and indirect and induced workers supported by the operations of the arena supports $9 million in city taxes, $4 million in county, school and other local district taxes and $17 million in state taxes each year.
-Although the new arena is still in the early planning stages, estimated total construction costs are $900.5 million. Of this total, hard construction that could support local jobs and economic impacts could total $693.0 million. The multiplier effect of this local construction spending could result in a total increase in economic activity of $1.3 billion during the multi-year construction period (Figure 2). The project could support an estimated 6,630 direct construction jobs and an additional 3,620 indirect and induced jobs related to local suppliers and employee spending in Oklahoma City.
Etc etc you get the point. There's lots more in the report, and its worth a read. But you also have to realize, this is all for the old stadium. and is just in reference to NBA business brought to our city. If we had a bigger/better stadium we could get a lot more non-NBA events as well, which again, is more money on top of the more money we would be getting from NBA spending. This report is also in reference to just 1 year, so that 900 million ends up giving us returns for at least the next few decades. The report doesn't include the new hotels and restaurants built, the jobs they create, and the cash they bring. We've already had a lot of them, and we'll just be getting more as we grow. We can't sit around and rely on oil anymore to hold our economy up, OKC is too big for that now, and we've already run most of them out of the state. We have to continue to diversify our economy and grow to make it work.
Further, here's the old Thunder Lease summary, which includes money coming to us from the NBA not fatored in to the report above, to include ticket sales, parking fees, and facility use fees. These will all be going up when our facilities are nicer too.
The school system can be fixed with more money, the roads are better than I ever remember them being, and the job market is much better in many areas, worse in others. Growth, economic strength, and visitor attractions make all of those things better, or at least provide the income to do so.
We've definitely had many companies move offices here in the last 10 years, bricktown has always been a crappy place, OKC is an awful lot nicer than other metro areas, thats for sure.
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The architectural engineering firm will very likely not be from Oklahoma because they’ll be using one that specializes in designing arenas (the closest one I know of is Walter P. Moore in Dallas, who did the AE work on the North Texas Football Cathedral), but the actual construction will almost certainly be done by a local contractor (probably Flintco or Manhattan).
Gotta remember actual politicians are involved. One would think that would be the case, but again. Still dead set against.
Maybe we could get those guys that designed the jail?
I’d guess that Manhattan would be the odds-on favorite—they were the GC on the North Texas Football Cathedral, and they’re based in Tulsa. For all its faults, the state does have an “Oklahoma first” law that gives preference to Oklahoma-based companies when awarding public contracts.
All that said, I’m with you in being opposed to the tax increase.
Hopefully it’s a non-issue, but you’d think that the charlie foxtrot that is the OK County Jail would be instructive in what not to do…
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