Clemson political scientist David Swindell echoes Baade's concerns. Swindell has studied the general economic and neighborhood impacts of minor and major league professional sports stadiums in places as varied as Indianapolis; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Arlington, Texas; and Cincinnati. He stresses that stadiums and convention centers have a "marginal impact" and "might even be negative"; he has seen "no evidence to support subsidies for private companies" in this way.
"Part of the problem," says one frustrated elected official in Cincinnati who requested anonymity, is that "people in this city look around and ask what [nearby] Indianapolis has done and they want to do that better." There's no question that Indianapolis, just a couple of hours northwest of Cincinnati, has grown in a major way, adding more than 40,000 people to its population between 1990 and 2000. Although Indianapolis is more than four times larger than Cincinnati (362 square miles vs. 78 for Cincinnati), Cincinnatians still compare the cities since their respective metropolitan areas are about the same size: 1.5 million people. Between 1974 and 1992, the period of the most intense investment in its downtown, Indianapolis funneled $2.76 billion into various development projects, most of which were centered on sports.
The civic leaders who cite these cases fail to check the peer-reviewed academic research that shows that Indianapolis' downtown development has largely failed. One of the most extensive studies of Indianapolis comes from Clemson's Swindell, Indiana University political scientists Michael Przybylski and Daniel Mullins, and Mark Rosentraub, author of Major League Losers and director of Indiana University's Center for Urban Policy and the Environment. Published in the Journal of Urban Affairs in 1994, the study found that such investments in Indianapolis increased sports-related employment by 60 percent. But since these jobs accounted for just 0.32 percent of all jobs in the Indianapolis economy, the overall effect on economic development was negligible.
"Indianapolis' focus on its downtown area and sports as a development strategy was associated with a general trend of increased employment and economic growth," conclude the authors. "However, Indianapolis' strategy did not result in more growth than was experienced by other Midwestern communities and did not lead to a concentration of higher paying jobs in the region." In short, Indianapolis' growth was the result of larger regional economic trends and the expansion of existing businesses, including a dramatic increase in Indiana University-Purdue University's employment base from 3,000 full-time faculty and staff to 8,200. Moreover, although the city's raw population grew from 1990 to 2000, its share of the region's population fell from 52.9 percent to 48.8 percent.
And even if public-sector investments did fuel job growth downtown, nearby neighborhoods would still be unlikely to see benefits. Consider Cleveland, the notorious Rust Belt city that pumped millions of public dollars into revitalizing its downtown during the 1980s. The value of commercial properties downtown doubled in value during that decade, but commercial property values outside the downtown fell by 4 percent overall.
Ironically, while local leaders look to other cities for new programs and projects, few look to those cities whose citizens have rejected such measures. Just two hours up I-71 from Cincinnati, voters in Columbus, Ohio, turned down a 1997 measure to publicly finance a new soccer stadium and a new hockey arena. Both facilities were eventually built anyway -- with mostly private money -- and both now house professional sports teams, despite predictions that public funding would be crucial to land the franchises.
Studies by the Pound
Cincinnati's emphasis on large, visible downtown development projects is in part a reflection of the "expert" advice proffered by consultants who have "studied" their "feasibility" and "economic benefits." In the case of the city's convention center, consultants concluded that Cincy needed a bigger (and more expensive) facility to compete with other cities. More recently, OKI released the results of its study from a national consulting firm "quantifying" the benefits of the first leg of the proposed multibillion dollar rail system, a light-rail trolley line extending from Northern Kentucky through the downtown of Cincinnati and up to its northern suburbs.
The studies seem endless at times, and the intent of most is transparent. One, written by Vanderbilt management professor Richard W. Oliver, purported to show the economic benefits of having the NHL Predators in Nashville. It was titled: They Shoot! They Score! NHL Nashville Predators Score Winning Goal for Middle Tennessee! Convention center expansions fit the same mold. "The rhetoric of convention center investment is drawn from 'feasibility studies' often developed by a national accounting or economic research firm," explains Heywood Sanders, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Sanders has researched convention centers and their economic impacts for almost two decades, reviewing dozens of feasibility studies and writing numerous professional articles and reports, including a highly regarded 1998 article in the policy journal The Public Interest. "These studies lay out an invariably positive market analysis, justifying more local convention space and lending visible, supposedly objective support to political pressures to spend more public money for convention centers."
The studies are little more than marketing tools for chambers of commerce pushing one project or another; despite popular local support, big and small cities across the nation are littered with failed economic development projects, almost all dramatically oversold by their proponents. What's too often missing is the bottom line.
In a study last year written for the Boston-based Pioneer Institute, a market-oriented think tank focusing on Massachusetts policy issues, Sanders documents the shrinking market for conventions, a harsh reality that is rarely acknowledged by gung-ho city big wigs and their consultants. Most forecasts during the 1990s for trade shows and conventions were "unreasonable and unreliable," Sanders writes. Total event counts declined from 1998 to 2001, and average trade-show attendance dropped by more than 24 percent. Large, money-making conventions are gravitating toward a select few locations -- Atlanta, Orlando, Las Vegas, Chicago, and New York. Other traditional destination spots, such as Boston, haven't fared well, with events there slipping from 71 in 1996 to just 63 in 2001. Even large, vibrant, expanding metropolitan areas such as Houston or Dallas don't have what it takes to be competitive in the current convention market.
Along with stadiums and convention centers, consultants tout light-rail transit projects with reports that project fantastic benefits. Untold in these "studies" is the fact that the benefits are the product of computer models and have never been achieved in the real world. For example, in 1978, planners in Portland, Oregon, forecast that by 1990 the city's light-rail ridership would be 42,500. In reality, it was half that. In Sacramento, light-rail ridership was initially projected to be 50,000 on an average weekday. By 1998, average weekday boardings were 28,000 (slightly higher than a revised projection made once local officials had committed to the project). Studies typically highlight the congestion-relief benefits of rail transit, even as transportation planners refuse to argue that these benefits exist. Indeed, in his 1998 survey of rail transit investments built since 1980, Jonathan Richmond of Harvard's Taubman Center for Local Government concluded that none had appreciably reduced congestion in cities.
Nevertheless, OKI is pushing a 117-mile system of seven rail lines criss-crossing Cincinnati. The twin goals: to bring people back into the city and reduce road congestion. A 1998 estimate by OKI pegged the cost of the entire system at $1.8 billion. A single line running from Northern Kentucky through downtown Cincinnati to suburban Blue Ash might cost close to $900 million. And that's a conservative estimate: Large public investments are notorious for coming in over budget. A light-rail system being built in Jersey City, New Jersey, was supposed to cost $1 billion, but costs have exceeded the early estimates with just two-thirds of the track laid.
Real Development
This isn't the first time Cincinnati and Hamilton County have dabbled in rail -- or been taken to the cleaners while doing so. In 1912, reformist mayor Henry Hunt proposed a 15-mile rapid rail transit system; ironically, he thought it would help relieve congestion in the inner city by letting people live farther apart from one another. By 1920, private contractors were digging tunnels in the drained Miami-Erie Canal bed. The project was abandoned in 1927, after the costs ramped up well beyond original estimates and the rampant corruption became public. The entrances to buried subway stations and rail lines are still visible for those who know where to look.
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