Congratulations, Salt Lake, you’re finally a big-league city.
It isn’t the presence of the Utah Jazz, a large university or the experience of staging an Olympics or the ensuing scandal that had worldwide ramifications that give you the distinction.
It took a controversy over a stadium.
“There isn’t a major city in the country that hasn’t had some sort of debate over stadiums,” said Neil deMause, co-author of the book, Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit.
“It’s not the uncommon way for these things to be decided, it’s the usual way.”
“It isn’t a trend, it’s the way of doing business,” said Rodney Fort, a sports economics professor at Washington State University. “Team owners understand they are creating economic activity, but the hard part to wade through is whether the public is getting anything for the money it is putting into it and how much it is willing to pay.”
For the full story, please go to the Salt Lake Tribune at http://www.sltrib.com/realsaltlake/ci_3886614.
(Text above, with permission from The Salt Lake Tribune.)
