Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer in the studio to handicap the new deal for a new Titans Stadium involving Mayor John Cooper’s office and Metro Nashville city council.
Leahy: Clint, you know a lot about the way that economic incentive deals are structured. You worked in that department, the economic development department here, for many years.
And I saw this deal announced about the Titans Stadium on Monday by Mayor Cooper and I have to say I was scratching my head about it because a lot of it, to me, didn’t make sense, just the outlines of it.
He came out and said they’d cut a deal with the Titans. It’s going to be $2.2 billion stadium. It will be financed – $800 million and some odd from the Titans, $500 million already passed by the state legislature, and then $750 million in some kind of municipal bond that would go out to the market. They raised the money and it would be paid back from sales taxes.
Brewer: I was with some friends yesterday, and sometimes my friends think I’m like the ombudsman for all of government. (Leahy chuckles) And I had one of them go, it’s the most expensive NFL stadium in league history, and one of the smallest.
Leahy: Interesting.
Brewer: And those numbers, I’m not too sure of.
Leahy: I don’t actually I don’t want to get into too much in detail because it’s really nitty gritty, but I will say that just on principle, I am opposed to this because I think there should be no state or local involvement in the financing of it.
The standard should be the way that the L.A. Rams built SoFi Stadium, like $5 billion, all privately financed. But that aside, I’d like you to sort of give us some insight. This has to be approved by Metro Council, which has 39 members now.
Brewer: I was part of the 10 people that took the soccer stadium …
Leahy: Yes. So you know about this kind of stuff, right, but it has to be approved by Metro Council. And I wonder if you could sort of handicap that. There’s a development I heard, actually Robert Swope, publicly say that, generally, he wasn’t a big fan of the mayor, but he said that this was the best that could be done in a bad deal.
Now, I don’t agree with that. I’ll talk to Swope here and have him come in and try to explain that to me, but given that, and given all of the dynamics, what are the odds that the Metro council will approve this “deal?”
Brewer: I think given enough time – because you’ve got a really good team of lobbyists and government relations professionals working on it. So let’s set the mayor and his ability to get this done aside.
I think the Titans’ ability to get this done is probably pretty good. It’s a question of when, is the issue. It’s mid-October, but I don’t know how many votes this has to go through. I would think multiple votes.
Leahy: Three votes is the standard.
Brewer: Standard. It’s not a one-vote issue. You’ve got a series of votes you’ve got to get through. It’s really different, particularly for members of Metro council if it passes in ’22 or ’23.
Leahy: Tell us why.
Brewer: Well, ’23 is an election year for Metro council.
Leahy: And for the mayor.
Brewer: And for the mayor. And so Metro council members, their vote is going to stay with them regardless. But you do it in the election year and really, you do it at all.
I mean, they’re already thinking about the election that, you know, maybe there’s somebody in the district who wasn’t going to run against them, who decides to run against them based on how they voted on the stadium.
Leahy: My guess would be that if somebody voted for the stadium, they would be more likely to have a challenger.
Brewer: Possibly. The other thing, too, is there’s probably some measure of horse trading going on behind the scenes with the ’23 budget.
It could be like, I may vote for your stadium even though I don’t want to, but I want these new bike lanes in my district, or I need these sidewalks or this park land or this community center, or more police.
Leahy: The ol’ political log rolling.
Brewer: Horse trading. So there’s that. So can the mayor’s office give the council members who are on the fence about it some cover next year?
But here’s the thing. You’ve got some pretty staunch opponents to the deal. Councilman-at-Large Bob Mendes, he’s …
Leahy: Is opposed to it?
Brewer:Â His posture is that he’s opposed to it.
Leahy: There are five at-large members of the council, only four of them serving now, because one of them is not.
Brewer: Mendes is an attorney.
Leahy: He’s a smart guy, he’s a very smart guy. He’s a lefty for the most part. I’m opposed to most everything that he does. However, in this instance, I agree with him. So he’s opposed to it.
Brewer: Yes.
Leahy: Presently.
Brewer: Yes. If I’m sitting on the council, from a tactical standpoint, if you can drag the thing into next year, it changes the complexion a lot. And I think maybe some people on the council who might go along with it lose a little bit of nerve. It may not come out in its current form if it gets pushed to ’23.
The other issue is, and this is supposed to be like, pending, based on the news stories I saw. But the GEODIS Park, the soccer stadium, had a community benefits agreement, which was essentially a variety of things, but it was essentially how are they going to give back to the community and make this facility in the public interest beyond just the sporting part of it. And it involved jobs and office space, a daycare and a variety of different things.
And so the Titans have yet to announce theirs yet based on the news stories I saw. Now maybe I missed it and it came out. But that’s another thing. There’s a group of people on the Metro council, the very progressive side of the council, that wants to see what that looks like.
Leahy: My words, not yours: Which left-wing group are they going to pander with to give a whole bunch of money to?
Brewer: It’s Nashville politics. There are a lot of factors still out there. Now, I will say again, they’re my peers, some of them are my friends. But the people working on this from the professional side – not the mayor’s office, but the lobbyists – they’re very good.
Leahy: We know you like them. And we know they like you. (Chuckles)
Brewer: Well, no, I just think they’ve done a good job and I think it’s going to be up to the Titans’ side of the ball, so to speak, to get this done.
Leahy: And we’ll get into that. Thanks so much for giving us the handicapping on that. There are so many questions about this that I want to get into this whole business of Mayor Cooper saying there’s a $2 billion liability associated with the current stadium.
Brewer: We’ll get to that at another time. I think we’re going to have some time to get into it.
Leahy: Good.
Brewer: They’re not going to pass it before I come back on Thursday.
Leahy: Well, good. We’ll do it more.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Titans Stadium” by Thank You (23 Millions+) views. CC BY 2.0.
The soccer stadium back door dealing was an insult to Nashvillians. Talk about a bunch of slimy dealings. The public got screwed. Now the same thing is happening with the football stadium. Politicians just cannot – will not is probably a better description – stop spending money they do not have on stadiums that are of questionable benefit. Let the Titans build a stadium if it is such a great deal. Then the various acts that want to perform there can rent it. More of the same old garbage. Who really believes any cost estimates? When was the last thing built by the government that cam e in on budget? I will be taking a long break while waiting for someone to name an example. Government hogwash!