>There is yet another article in the Bee about the NBA’s sad attempt to move the Kings into a new arena at Cal Expo.
“What I learned this week is we have a viable project,” NBA representative John Moag said. “There wasn’t one developer who said, ‘You’re crazy.'”
No what they said was, “You’re stupid.” At least that’s my guess…
“It comes as no surprise. We learned a project of this size is not financeable in today’s market,” said Brian May of Cal Expo. “Everybody has a different opinion on when economy is going to bounce back.”
First of all, financeable is not a real word. Try “cannot get financing.”
Secondly, do the words, “No, Duh!” mean anything to you? Have you looked at any recent sales of commercial properties? Oh that’s right…there haven’t really been any! The credit market has been frozen for the last 10 months. Where have you been living? Under a rock?
While I try to slow my pulse, I wonder about something. The people who support this new area keep saying that Arco Arena is antiquated. How so? They never seem to have any examples of how Arco Arena has reached its functional obsolescence.
Let’s say for argument’s sake that Arco Arena is functionally obsolete. Is it really going to be that much more expensive to upgrade the facility as opposed to abandoning it and building a whole new arena complex from scratch? And what about all the infrastructure already in place out in Natomas? Have these pro-Cal Expo arena people even been on Business 80 in the past 20 years? It gets jammed up at the slightest hiccup and it’s riddled with potholes.
And with regard to the argument that its the Arena that is inhibiting the Kings’ income…give me a break. Don’t you think the fact that they have a crap team has a little more to do with low attendance at games than a crappy arena? Have you been to Candlestick Park lately? That place is one 3.1 quake* away from falling into the Bay and from what I can tell, it still packs in the fans when the 49ers play there.
*For those of you outside of California, that’s a pretty slight temblor. If you aren’t sitting down quietly reading a book in a high rise building when it hits, you might miss it.