From the Indianapolis Star:
The city’s sports board Monday signed off on an agreement with the Indianapolis Colts that calls for the city to spend up to $2 million to add suites at Lucas Oil Stadium.
The money will pay to build two more luxury suites and two small kitchens at the same time the city settles an old dispute with the NFL franchise over concession expenses. The Colts are chipping in for improvements, too, by adding two more illuminated ribbon message boards in the Downtown stadium’s upper corners. Those will complement two similar boards that cost the team about $700,000 in 2011.
For leaders of the Capital Improvement Board, which runs the city’s sports venues and convention center, the city’s $2 million investment is worthwhile because it keeps the $720 million stadium, which opened in 2008, at a “top-notch level.”
But critics of CIB spending priorities say it’s another example of taxpayers footing the bill for upgrades that line the pockets of wealthy team owners, including the Colts’ Jim Irsay.
“My question is: Why is the city paying for something that the Colts are just going to make money off of?” said Zach Adamson, a Democratic City-County Council member. “We’re going back to a situation where the Colts are coming back to the city with their hands out, asking for more of what is limited.”
Suites are a big moneymaker for the Colts. A 2008 estimate by The Star figured that suites and club seats could generate at least $25 million a year for the team.
The CIB also came under fire a few years ago for paying for $3.5 million in upgrades to Downtown’s Bankers Life Fieldhouse at the request of the Indiana Pacers. Other deals have benefited team owners, including the Colts’ contractual cut of roughly half of all non-game revenue at the stadium under its lease and recent $10 million annual payments to the Pacers to help offset the team’s costs of operating the fieldhouse.
Not that the teams haven’t chipped in. Before renewing its deal with the CIB for another year, the Pacers paid $16 million last year to upgrade the fieldhouse’s sound system and to install gargantuan new scoreboards.
...
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013304080039
