City of Phoenix and Phoenix Suns officials had a streaky shooting day Saturday morning, although ultimately scoring some points at their first public meeting on a proposed renovation plan to Talking Stick Resort Arena.
The meeting, held at Talking Stick, was the first of five the city plans to hold this week but was the only one to be held downtown. It follows a raucous City Council meeting, which catapulted local resident Greta Rogers to Twitter fame last month, resulting in city officials delaying a vote on the proposed renovations.
The deal is being pushed for due to an obsolescence clause in the original 1989 contract between the city and the Suns, which states if the Suns determine the arena to be obsolete by July 1, 2019, they can leave ten years before their lease expires in 2022 rather than 2032.
City of Phoenix Official Christine Mackay emphasized throughout the meeting that taxpayers would not be footing the bill from their own wallets.
The money used for the renovations, Mackay said, would come from the city’s tourism tax, which is primarily funded by taxes on hotel and rental cars paid for by visitors. The money derived from the tax is known as the Sports Facilities Special Revenue Fund or SFF.
“We’ll do a presentation, really walk our citizens through the facts, that we own the building that this is paid for by a tourism tax it’s not paid for by our citizens, that this is a 27-year old building that the city owns and with or without our anchor tenant our real estate needs improvement,” Mackay said before the meeting began.
Mackay began the meeting by giving an overview of the deal, which will cost a total of $230 million, with $150 million coming from the city and $80 million from the Suns. The city would pay for infrastructure improvements, such as plumbing, while the team would pay for improving the fan experience, such as beefed-up suites. The plan also extends the lease for five years to 2037, with an opt-in clause for the Suns to extend it five more to 2042.
The plan was met with mostly positive reception, a solid majority of the public commenters voiced their support for the plan. Mackay pointed out that annual revenue for the city had risen from $57 million before the arrival of the Suns downtown to well over $500 million now–a tenfold increase.
Others were satisfied the moment Mackay clarified Phoenix taxpayers were not going to be on the hook for the renovations. Fred Linsenmeyer was the first public commenter to speak and said he would not have even gone had he known that. Several attendants also lauded the Suns for their charity work in the community.
Many attendants voiced vehement dissent, saying city tax dollars could go toward paying Phoenix’s massive pension debt and infrastructure improvements like roads. Retired Phoenix police officer Mike Dwyer referred to a memo City of Phoenix Chief Financial Officer Denise Olson sent to City Manager Ed Zuercher in 2016 which states that funds from the SFF are not limited solely to arena improvements.
“I think what a lot of people don’t understand is it’s true that the fund doesn’t have a revenue stream by most locals, but the fund could be used to benefit locals because there’s no legal limit,” Dwyer said. “We could use that money… for things like keeping our pools open, keeping our parks open, keeping our libraries open, things we struggle with every year.”
Dwyer added that with other major downtown developments in recent years, such as the biomedical campus, the idea that downtown would crumble economically without the Suns was a “fallacy.”
Another opposition was based on the principle that no public funds, regardless of origin, should be used for things like sporting venue renovations. This belief brought together a woman wearing a t-shirt in support of Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Boaz Whitbeck, a representative of the right-wing advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by oil billionaires, the Koch brothers.
Whitbeck referred to the group as a “grassroots” organization, which drew one of the few heckles during the two-hour meeting, before slamming the deal as “egregious corporate welfare.”
The only other heckle came from Dwyer, who loudly wondered why the Suns had brought players Devin Booker, Jamal Crawford and Deandre Ayton to the meeting. The players, for their part, stood by before they left after Suns Interim General Manager James Jones thanked the attendees for coming.
Contact the reporter at dmperle@asu.edu.
