Illustration by Danny Elchert
Anyone who has scurried to give the house an emergency cosmetic facelift for unexpected company should appreciate the beauty of Ballpark Village as presented for the 2009 All-Star Game.
Just as those pristine living areas belie the hidden detail that you’ve recently converted your bedroom walk-in closet into a small landfill, so it is that our proud Village will afford unsuspecting guests a vista of thoughtful, innovative urban planning. It’s intended to look downright intended.
For those keeping score at home, Ballpark Village has been touted as recently as January (to the Board of Aldermen) as a $600 million project that will have a minimum of 325,000 square feet of office space and 250,000 square feet of retail and entertainment space in its first phase alone. Over the past nine years, it has been repeatedly “unveiled” as that and more, at one point or another featuring a residential tower with 400 or more housing units, an aquarium, a Cardinals museum, and on and on and on.
For the moment, we proudly present Ballpark Village, the, uh, “temporary softball field” and surface parking lot.
Don’t snicker—not if you kept a straight face when that last-minute guest was especially impressed with the color of the old rug you brought up from the basement to cover those burn holes in your living-room floor. We’ve simply chosen function over frills.
The “temporary softball field” was a particular stroke of genius, a veritable field-of-dreams facade with a feel as American as a hot dog, a slice of apple pie, or tax-increment financing. It can’t help but draw temporary softball players from around the globe.
As for the impromptu parking lot, it is as properly striped as if it had been planned for years. Visitors will never know the difference. The important thing is that both the softball field and the parking lot are significantly more presentable than the expansive acres of dirt that have blighted the landscape for the past three years since the beloved Busch Stadium was destroyed.
Besides, Ballpark Village was never meant to be.
The economic explanation for this goes all the way back to 1966, when the Cardinals built state-of-the-art (and privately funded) Busch Stadium downtown. Fans flocked there by the millions to see baseball (as well as numerous special events and two decades of football).
In the 40 years that followed, the free-enterprise system spoke—or in this case, didn’t speak—to the viability of commercial, retail, and residential development around the stadium. Restaurants and bars didn’t open in droves immediately around the stadium. The few that did struggled mightily (even if they did decent bar business after a game).
Retail businesses didn’t open at all near the stadium. Neither did office or residential developments. Nobody built an aquarium. The Cardinals themselves didn’t construct a full-fledged museum, despite their rich history.
This was a real-life economic study, not one of the overpriced academic ones with which this city and region have been overrun. This was truly the free market at work.
And it was all in accordance with the law—that is, the law of supply and demand. If 50,000 people repeatedly congregating in a stadium created profitable retail, dining, residential, or commercial opportunities, don’t you suppose that business ventures large and small would have flocked to capitalize on the marketplace they created?
One need not possess a degree in economics to understand this. The average family of four spends in excess of $200 to attend a Cardinals game (according to Team Marketing Report’s Fan Cost Index), and depending on one’s commute, the experience can consume five or six hours of the day. For many families, shopping before or after the game probably isn’t a priority.
Similarly, living or working next to a stadium may not be a terrific draw for individuals and businesses when they make their respective real-estate decisions. Even if a professional sports franchise is seen as a wonderful and beloved asset to its community—as the Cardinals undoubtedly are—that doesn’t make them an economic generator for the area immediately around the place they play. This is especially true on the 280-plus days a year they aren’t playing.
Back in the year 2000, when the Cardinals were first revving up plans to receive a quarter of a billion dollars in public subsidy for a new stadium, team officials spoke boldly about how a new stadium two blocks removed from the old one—and seating slightly fewer people at greater cost—would spawn magical new markets.
Then–team president Mark Lamping told the Kansas City Star that the state and city would reap $22 million annually by the year 2011 from a development that “would include 400 housing units, 400,000 square feet of office space, 135,000 square feet of retail, and restaurant space, an aquarium, and a museum.”
The Star noted that no developer had agreed to pursue this dream and that the Cardinals were making no firm commitments. But neither that nor the real-world economic experience of the previous four decades stood in the way of their enthusiasm.
“We have a real motivation to get that done,” Lamping said of Ballpark Village. “The teams that are the most successful will provide fans with the best possible entertainment experience. You have to widen your focus quite a bit.”
With all respect to Lamping, none of this has happened, and it can’t happen without dramatic public subsidy. Why not? Because the Cardinals have the same audience going to the same place for the same reason they’ve been going since 1966. The free market has spoken.
If government—at any or all levels—wishes to prop up the market artificially, anything can happen. Give commercial real-estate developers enough public assistance, for example, and their subsidized project certainly could compete aggressively with those lacking subsidy.
It’s not clear whether that’s why the not-yet-materialized Ballpark Village is promised to be the new 175,000-square-foot home of Stifel Nicolaus, a St. Louis investment company (which presently headquarters a mile away downtown at 501 N. Broadway). Who knows whether fruits of the presumed public subsidy are what would make it possible to convince Stifel to uproot in these treacherous economic times?
One thing is certain, though, and it’s a matter of civic physics. Ballpark Village’s subsidized gain will be 501 N. Broadway’s equal loss. What’s the commercial owner of that nonsubsidized building supposed to do with four-plus empty floors of office space if Stifel departs? And how is this move a net gain for downtown?
It isn’t. Just like it wouldn’t be a net gain if Ballpark Village—using the advantage of subsidy—were able to attract a restaurant that, in turn, took business from a downtown competitor that has been fighting the good fight (and paying its taxes) without government help.
This makes no sense. And no matter how gussied up Ballpark Village gets for company, there’s no sweeping this reality under the rug.
A co-owner of St. Louis Magazine, Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
