The differnece in Gwinnett and Frisco is that the leaders of Frisco had insight and there were several needs in Frisco. The first one is that there were no hotels for “corporations” in the area, ase in Gwinnett have no corporation headquarters really near the stadium. 

I must ask the question of why did the leaders of Frisco join forces with Southwest Sport Group to head this project?  Could the answer be they wanted to do a joint effort since the leaders of the city do not specialize in sports and development. They had the forsight to see they needed guidance. The leaders of Gwinnett have not opted for this type of input from companieds that specialize in these types of projects. Out leaders are doing this by the “seat of their pants” and just htink they can build a stadium and let the private market move in without a plan.

I would have been very happy to have leaders like Frisco had that shared their vision with the citizens of the town. They sold the concept and moved forward with a plan.

Frisco Texas is a bogeyman for several reasons.  Already in place were several major corporate headquarters.  Travelers in and out of those had only 1, 4 star hotel choice.  The buildup in hotels was not driven by the sports facilities.  It had already started (or at least, before the base ball park.  The hockey practice facility was already in place).  The sports facilities  were complementary in offering the crowd in the area entertainment possibilites.

And, Frisco, was NOT a small town.  Plano is right next door.  Frisco’s most comparable comparison to Atlanta is Alpharetta.  That is, a growing high end suburb with corporate headquarters and well away from the central city.j

Rick, you need to read the contract with the Braves and really see what comes back to the county. Only ONE dollar per ticket comes back to the coutny with a minimum number of $400,000 paid to the county and this is not even close to paying the debt on 28 million in bonds they let ( about 2.5 million per year).  Also in the contract there is speak of all surplus must go into a capital reserve fund to pay for upgrades and maintenance. 

The bottom line is that the powers to be never did an economic impact study and all of their belief is based on assumption and gut feeling.

I should give Michael Pearson of the AJC credit at least he is writing on the subject although it seems as if he has been duped by some county officials on a few occasions.

There is an argument to be made that the Gwinnett Braves will attract some dollars that would have been spent outside the Atlanta area.  The consulting firm’s economic impact analysis estimated more than half of the spending would be net new spending. This is unreasonably optimistic, but at least the consultants  acknowledge that only net-new spending is relevant here. Nasuti thinks that all 400,000 spenders are a net benefit. I talk about the potential impact of non-Gwinnett visitors in this post.

While those entertainment dollars surely would have been spent SOMEWHERE in the metro area in the absence of the team/stadium, is it a plausible argument they would have been spent outside Gwinnett county? That is, how many of those 400,000 fans would have instead gone to a restaurant/bar/movie in other neighboring communities?

I could at least see a situation where the net for the metro area would be zero but where the county comes out ahead in its competition against other parts of the metro area. (Imagine the county is only as large as the stadium itself and the next best development option for the land is a strip mall full of Applebees and TGI Fridays, which almost necessarily will draw from a smaller geographic area than the stadium would.)

I realize the answer to this is more empirical than theoretical, and my suspicions are that the relative gain by the county doesn’t offset the opportunity cost of the funds (that is, the hypothetical posed above is probably entirely ridiculous), but being generally unfamiliar with the municipal boarders, rooting interests, and population of the area, I wonder if the argument is at least plausible.

If so, it poses a different economic problem whereby each municipality/county in a metro area acts rationally by offering incentives to locate in their jurisdiction to the detriment (or net zero, at best) of the region as a whole.