There have been several comments and questions about the city’s deal with the sports group on this blog lately so I went to find the contract.
I’m working from the September 2012 one. I believe that were modifications made later that dealt with the annual fee and the life of the contract. As far as I know the remainder of the September 2012 one is still valid.
This post deals with the parking provisions of the contract.
Parking
- The city must allocate 500 parking spaces for use during events
- Once a year the sports group needs to tell the city how many parking spaces (up to 300) it wants to use that are designated as special
- The special spaces will be located at the civic center garage or the union plaza transit terminal with the first 200 being at the civic center garage
- The sports group then pays the city $1 for each space times the number of season games for the year. If there are 77 home games the sports group will pay 300 times 77 times $1 or $23,100 for the year. The $1 per space per game raises to $1.46 by the 21st year.
- The other 200 spaces (300+200=500) will be designated as surface parking and will be at the city hall visitor lot and the city parking lot to the west of the ball park along West Franklin Avenue.
On event day those parking spaces will be rented to patrons with the sports group getting half of the money and the city the other half, kind of, but more on that later.
The city will be responsible for and pay for staffing the special parking areas to collect the fees, as well as security at the garages. The city will also be responsible for maintaining and providing security for the pedestrian routes between the parking areas and the ball park.
The sports group will collect the parking fees for the surface parking places.
Extra
The city will also make available other parking different from the 500 spaces above for ball park employees, concessionaires, merchandisers, and staff at no cost to the sports group or those using the parking spaces. This parking arrangement applies every day, not just on event day. The city does not have to provide any staff for these parking spaces though.
Rates
The sports group gets to set the parking rate. If the city disagrees then they will use the average rate being charged by parking lots within a 1/4 mile radius of the ball park.
Kind of
I mentioned earlier that the city will get 50% of the parking fees, kind of. Actually there will be a revenue cap and the city will only be able to collect up to $655,000 per year “from the aggregate of the Ticket Fees, the Parking Fees and the Split Revenues” in the first five calendar years.
Non baseball events
The sports group will be able to use the stadium for other events. Concerts and other entertainment events, meetings and banquets, soccer, football, lacross, other sporting events, community-oriented events, and any other for profit events will trigger the parking provisions above.
Yes, the city will have to pay for and provide security and cashiers at the parking garages when the sports group hosts events on the 288 days that baseball is not scheduled.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
The TORA emails reveal that the Mountain Star terms were effectively “downloaded” to CC for enactment from Wilson. There appears to have been no critical oversight or negotiation of our interests, which makes me wonder why we pay a City Manager and staff. The Shadow Government spoke and City Hall obeyed. The local presstitutes, too, did not vet or criticize the giveaway terms.
Everyone hopped on the AAA train, but now we know why the Times was so anxious to see this deal pass.
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Yes, it’s sad to see how the integrity and professionalism of the El Paso Times has deteriorated over the course of the AAA ballpark campaign. Not only has the Times written an unusually large number of pro-ballpark editorials along with a plethora of blatant promotion articles, it even stooped so low as to write an editorial this week defending the choice of the Chihuahuas as the team name. It said the name “will grow on us.”
It wrote another one praising Mountainstar for inviting kids to its invitation-only event to announce the name. The way I see it, they simply exploited the kids. If this is truly El Paso’s team, as the owners liked to say when lobbying for their free stadium and for increased spending, why was this week’s event not open to the public?
If you want to know just how badly the Times has sold out, read my comment a couple of weeks ago, which lists all the editorials they’ve written as part of their Mountainstar campaign.
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The good news is that they are paying the price for being the uncritical cheerleaders rather than the 4th Estate, laying off people now, who probably had nothing to do with the Times editorial policy that I would describe as, “Kiss MS’s ass no matter.”
This city really needs an English language newspaper to keep tabs on the Shadow Government.
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The parking facilities are taxpayer-owned assets and income from those facilities belongs to the taxpayers. Now that income opportunity is being given to Paul and Woody to help assure the profitability of their for-profit venture. Those upstanding Republicans would call this welfare or income redistribution if they were not the beneficiaries?
Since the city has to provide the cashiers and absorb the labor costs, maintenance, etc., the city will in all likelihood lose money on the parking deal and have to come up with other funds to cover the true cost of parking expenses. Meanwhile, the bulk of the parking money, which goes to Mountainstar, is pure profit. They have no parking-related expenses.
We’re subsidizing this little venture in more ways than people realize. That’s an interesting interpretation of capitalism and free markets.
A public/private partnership means the private partners — Foster and Hunt — get the lion’s share of the revenue and any and all profits, while the taxpayers foot the lion’s share of the bill, throw in more operating expense subsidies, but get none of the profits.
Interesting how that works.
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Guys and Gals, just look at what deal the strong Albuquerque mayor was able to get for his taxpayers and then look at the deal our overpaid, Harvard grad, illustrious City Manager was able to get us. Maybe we should see if that guy is still alive and replace Wilson with him.
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“Porking” does seem like an appropiate title, because the taxpayers are definately getting screwed. Am l really being all that facetious when l say that given the fact that the city will be collecting such a miniscule amount of money, and that it costs us taxpayers a nice chunk of change to pay for the maintenance for one of these stadium events, would it be less costly NOT to go to a stadium event?
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