Cheap. We blow that on taxpayer funded sports stadiums.
Beat me to it, was going to comment on the same — if Apple were an NFL franchise they’d have expected the city to pay for the new HQ. so whack.
It is pretty whack forcing cities and taxpayers to foot the bill for billionaires to build these stadiums. If teams want new stadiums, pay for it themselves or get the NFL to chip in more. I voted no for the new stadium in San Diego. Screw the Spanos family.
I think you’d change your mind if it meant keeping thousands of jobs in your city. Midwestern cites are currently falling all over themselves to get Amazon to build its new headquarters in their neck of the woods because it means jobs, jobs, and more jobs. NFL teams and their stadiums employ many hundreds of people and inject $millions into a community from restaurants to night clubs to hotels with thousands of jobs.
And the moment they start not getting any returns on their investment they move to another city and make those tax payers pay for a new stadium...leaving tax payers screwed! I think taxpayer money could be spend on much better things than a stupid stadium that some rich owner could find investors to pay for if they didn't have the money.
Cheap. We blow that on taxpayer funded sports stadiums.
Beat me to it, was going to comment on the same — if Apple were an NFL franchise they’d have expected the city to pay for the new HQ. so whack.
It is pretty whack forcing cities and taxpayers to foot the bill for billionaires to build these stadiums. If teams want new stadiums, pay for it themselves or get the NFL to chip in more. I voted no for the new stadium in San Diego. Screw the Spanos family.
Using incentives to generate revenues is no different than anything else in the free market. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Apple (or a sport's team) looking for tax breaks and other benefits for bringing business to a city. The problem is when there are underhanded deals being made by individuals to benefit themselves without regard for the municipality or its people, resulting in a net loss for the city and its taxpayers. Apple staying in Cupertino seems like a good deal for Cupertino.
I have no issues with cities giving tax breaks but the deals done with the Chargers and the city of San Diego were a complete disaster for the city. The list of disasters is long. The ticket guarantee, the renovation of Qualcomm in 1997, etc. Looks what's happening in Santa Clara with the 49ers new stadium. That's turned into a complete nightmare for the fans and the city of Santa Clara. At the end of the day, NFL teams don't bring that much to places that are already a top tourist destination such as San Diego. It's not worth the risk losing tourist dollars over what would have been a 17% hotel tax to build a new stadium.
Sure, and I appreciate people like you voting no against unfair deals that will bleed your community. There's clearly a very wide happy medium that will benefits the city, residents, team owners, and players, but it's an unfair game in most cases, at this point.
Perhaps we need professionals to act as middlemen for these negotiations is the cities can't handle it. You pay them a percentage but they in turn make sure you get a deal that will generate a net value for your community within x-years.
That actually is a great idea. The negotiations between the city of San Diego and the Chargers turned pretty nasty. A middleman probably would have been useful in this situation.
Did I miss the sum total being indicated in the article, or was it intentionally left for each reader to add up the numbers for themselves? Sheesh.
Building permits are just figures pulled out of someone’s ass at the time. They don’t reflect what something actually cost in the final accounting. There are design changes, cost overruns, inflation over period of time, you name it. Now there will be an appraisal for property tax purposes and Apple will report what they spent for Apple Park on their financial reports.
And yet these individual numbers are being reported here, estimates as they are. But not the total ‘estimate.’ Seems like that would be just as interesting as the individual building estimates. Well, it’s morning here now and I’m awake, so I guess I’ll add them up. $1.157 billion for all the buildings called out in the graphic, roughly summed up in my head. That’s a fair bit short of $5 billion. Must be some expensive landscaping.
Even if the numbers stated are correct they really don't say exactly what they cover. Maybe that's just the fees for certain aspects of the construction.
The breakdown is linked to in the article here (landscaping is one of the things included):
It's a list of construction contracts so this will be what it took to assemble the buildings and do the groundwork but doesn't seem to include cost of materials or transport of the materials. In some cases contractors will have taken care of supplies but likely not the bulk of it as they'd have to insure it themselves.
Tim Cook confirmed the total cost was close to $5b overall:
StrangeDays said: It is pretty whack forcing cities and taxpayers to foot the bill for billionaires to build these stadiums. If teams want new stadiums, pay for it themselves or get the NFL to chip in more. I voted no for the new stadium in San Diego. Screw the Spanos family.
Using incentives to generate revenues is no different than anything else in the free market. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Apple (or a sport's team) looking for tax breaks and other benefits for bringing business to a city. The problem is when there are underhanded deals being made by individuals to benefit themselves without regard for the municipality or its people, resulting in a net loss for the city and its taxpayers. Apple staying in Cupertino seems like a good deal for Cupertino.
Except that several studies have shown taxpayer financed stadiums do little, if anything, to improve area economics/municipal revenue.
I have no issues with cities giving tax breaks but the deals done with the Chargers and the city of San Diego were a complete disaster for the city. The list of disasters is long. The ticket guarantee, the renovation of Qualcomm in 1997, etc. Looks what's happening in Santa Clara with the 49ers new stadium. That's turned into a complete nightmare for the fans and the city of Santa Clara. At the end of the day, NFL teams don't bring that much to places that are already a top tourist destination such as San Diego. It's not worth the risk losing tourist dollars over what would have been a 17% hotel tax to build a new stadium.
Sure, and I appreciate people like you voting no against unfair deals that will bleed your community. There's clearly a very wide happy medium that will benefits the city, residents, team owners, and players, but it's an unfair game in most cases, at this point.
Perhaps we need professionals to act as middlemen for these negotiations is the cities can't handle it. You pay them a percentage but they in turn make sure you get a deal that will generate a net value for your community within x-years.
A12% reduction in player salaries would finance ANY new stadium proposed today. Municipal stadiums are really player salary subsidies.
Comments
https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/what-it-takes-to-build-apple-park
It's a list of construction contracts so this will be what it took to assemble the buildings and do the groundwork but doesn't seem to include cost of materials or transport of the materials. In some cases contractors will have taken care of supplies but likely not the bulk of it as they'd have to insure it themselves.
Tim Cook confirmed the total cost was close to $5b overall:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-apple-tim-cook-charlie-rose/
"Charlie Rose: Some have said it's a $5 billion project.
Tim Cook: It's a lot. It's a lot. It's somewhere near there."