New baseball stadium: a change is going to come?, by gimleteye

It is an interesting view, expressed in The Miami Herald today, why the new stadium for professional baseball in Miami got done on Thursday:

The simplest reason is that, just like the sports teams the politicians are choosing to support, these politicians didn't want to lose. They didn't want to be the group responsible for the final strike that officially sent the Marlins moving to a new city. A sense of pride actually kicked in, and it had less to do with the love of baseball and more to do with the hatred of being considered a community that couldn't support a professional baseball franchise.

I think the approval of the Marlin's stadium has more to do with desperation, sitting astride an economic Titanic--represented by the collapse of housing and construction and credit markets. When in doubt, spend.

Building is a much more optimistic activity that scrutinizing municipal budgets that will require soon enough, big layoffs all around.

A very strong argument could be made (and has been made by Michael Lewis, Miami Today, among others) that the last thing we need in Miami is more infrastructure that we can't afford.

And yet... and yet... besides from laying off city and county workers, what are our "deciders" going to do? Is it possible that they will look at their schedules, empty of lobbyists seeking zoning changes because the bait and switch in farmland is over and banks are scurrying for cover--any cover--before the regulators come beating down their doors, is it possible that our 'deciders' will look at their schedules and decide to focus on the needs of the poor, of the homeless, or of the environment, and tighten the very screws down that they have spent decades loosening in Miami and Miami-Dade county?

Be it as it may--a picture painted with broad brushstrokes--if you stand far enough away from the deal struck by county commissioners on Thursday, what you see is not a baseball stadium at all, or only in small enough part to make a good newspaper story.

So I agree in part with The Herald opinion writer, that there was more at work in the decision to move forward now than love of baseball. It was a fear of impotence amid signs that Miami is the epicenter of a housing bust that is stripping the gears from the economy not just here, but throughout the nation. Surely, at some level of awareness, Miami and Miami-Dade elected officials must know that their actions hastened an economic crisis of unprecedented depth?

What you see in a new baseball stadium that fans will greet indifferently because the costs of attendance are so high-- what you see are decisions makers who could constructively spend their time serving the public interest, now that the need to support development in farmland and downtown condos that can't be financed has shriveled like an apricot left in the back of the refrigerator.

Here is one constructive suggestion that costs a lot less than building a baseball stadium: give elected officials a homework assignment to read about what happened to Japan, real estate and its economy over the last twenty five years. Is it too much to ask that decision-makers should be conversant with reality?