As you’re reading this, the new Nationals baseball stadium has just opened up, to great fanfare no doubt. I hope they won their first home game. While many are basking in the excitement of the new ballpark, I remember the bitter fight four years ago over who would pay for it, and I brace for a similar fight over paying for a soccer stadium. I hope we don’t go there.

Professional sports are popular. They’re fun to watch, they can bring a community together, and being there in person can be exhilarating. The problem is that no one wants to pay for the stadium. Particularly the team owners, who often threaten to relocate in order to squeeze cities and states into ponying up for a new stadium. Political leaders who bow to this pressure then convince themselves that it’s worth it because the stadium will provide economic salvation, despite any real evidence to back it up. It’s a tragic story that gets repeated over and over again.

The Soccer Stadium Plans — Where We Are Now
With the Nationals leaving RFK, DC United wants a new home more appropriately sized for soccer. And they want the District to help pay for it. You can’t blame them after seeing more than $650 million in taxes going to baseball and $50 million last year to the Verizon Center (on top of other subsidies it receives.)

The preferred spot for a soccer stadium is Poplar Point, an undeveloped piece of land along the Anacostia River that the federal government is handing over to DC with the caveat that much will be set aside as parkland. The District picked Clark Realty to oversee a 20-year development of housing, commercial and park space. Clark's plans include an “optional” stadium.

Whether a stadium goes there remains an unanswered question. Last summer, Mayor Fenty told DC United's owner, Victor MacFarlane, that the city would take a pass on financing a stadium. MacFarlane apparently asked Fenty – who was a strident opponent of the baseball financing plan – for too much city subsidy.

But the story didn’t end there. MacFarlane kept trying, and focused his efforts on wooing support among civic leaders in Ward 8. He’s been pretty successful, with Marion Barry and others now strongly supporting a stadium at Poplar Point – with some form of subsidy.

This got Fenty's attention, too. Earlier this year, he floated the idea of a scaled-down stadium subsidy package – only $190 million – that would come from money now being collected for the baseball stadium. It turns out that those taxes and fees are generating more money than needed to make annual stadium bond payments. The extra funds are being used to pay off the bonds faster – like making an extra mortgage payment – but Fenty suggested instead diverting that money to a soccer stadium.

Taxpayer Funding for a Soccer Stadium Is a Bad Idea
Fenty’s plan has not been received very warmly. The business community, for one, is nervous. They now pay an annual “ballpark fee” – which will go away once the stadium is paid off. Under the soccer plan, the ballpark fee would in effect morph into a soccer stadium fee, too.

That idea shouldn’t be attractive to residents either. If the baseball fund is running a surplus – and if DC leaders want to do something with that money – it does not have to go to another sports venue. It could, for example, help pay for a new central library (fixing up the current MLK building or starting from scratch). This was a hot topic just a few years ago, but it has slipped off the radar screen. I assume that cost issues are a big reason. It would be a shame to pay for a soccer stadium while letting our main city library languish.

I think most DC residents understand these tradeoffs, which is why three of five oppose public financing for a soccer stadium.

A Soccer Stadiums Is Not the Key to Anacostia’s Economic Development
Everyone seemed to think DC’s baseball stadium would be great for economic development. That’s despite the consistent finding from sports economists that economic trends don’t change when stadiums open up – there’s no noticeable increase in jobs or income. With only 19 home games a year, should we really expect a soccer stadium to be a major catalyst for anything? (People often point to the success of the Verizon Center to justify other stadiums, but it’s used more like 240 times a year.)

Then there’s the fact that Clark Realty considers the stadium to be optional in their plans. They are ready to build out Poplar Point with or without a soccer stadium.

Finally, promises made when a stadium is proposed don’t always come true – or aren’t as good as they sound. The baseball stadium resulted in about 500 jobs for DC residents. Yet certain goals, like making sure at least half of the journey workers would be DC residents, were missed badly. Beyond that, spending $650 million to create 500 jobs doesn’t strike me as a good deal. At about $10,000 for standard job training programs, we could have gotten the same result for about $5 million.

Needed: Real Economic Development at Poplar Point
In the end, the soccer stadium discussion is a distraction from the more important issue of how to develop Poplar Point and other areas east of the Anacostia River in ways that really help residents. New development is always expensive, so it will be hard to build housing that is truly affordable to Ward 8 residents. Without a plan that includes a lot of “market- rate” units (read: high cost), it may be hard to attract retailers and other businesses.

That’s where public funding could make a much more important impact than a soccer stadium – $190 million could support a lot of affordable housing, public spaces like parks and libraries, job training and other services. Don’t we think that’s what Ward 8 residents would prefer? Putting that kind of money into a soccer stadium is a wasted opportunity.

Ed Lazere is director of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, which conducts research on tax and budget issues that affect low- and moderate-income DC residents.

P.S.: A DC Budget Teaser – Mayor Fenty has just released his proposed budget for FY 2009. It’s a bit early to make a thorough assessment – that will come in my next column – but it appears that amidst very tight budget conditions, Fenty has provided new funding for housing and schools, preserved other basic services and offered a smattering of other smaller initiatives.  He’s proposed a modest business tax cut, as well as an expansion of DC’s Earned Income Tax Credit for working poor families. (I probably will have something more critical to say a month from now!)