Stadium Nonsense

[Fletch59]

 (Edit - to clarify, this is the team's proposal, it's not ratified by the city, so we'll see what actually happens). A somewhat happy medium may have been struck on the stadium, wherein the team is staying (good) in its existing stadium (good) and receiving tons of public money to do it (bad). A shell game occurred - in which there's $650 million in public money, and $688 million of David Tepper's corporation's money; but here's where it gets sticky.   $650 million in public money all goes toward renovation, where that $688 million is marketing: 

• $117 million already spent (without saying on what)
• $421 million in capital improvements over the next 20 years, without much information on what that means
• $150 million toward the actual project at hand. 

There's no roof, which I think is fine, and to which adding one would include significant change to both the look and the use - anything would have to either cut into the bowl or go outside of it, and neither make sense. 
There's no talk of the grass, which is (to me) literally the most important thing - and keep in mind, in 2001, then-first-round-pick and current GM Dan Morgan broke his leg on a shoddy Panthers surface. 
I don't love public-private partnerships on these things, I don't love the illusion of Tepper putting in more than the city/county/municipality, and sounds like he can choose what $421 million goes toward, which, sure, I guess?   It does keep the team around, which has been a tug of war since before the LA relocation debacle.   The league hasn't expanded in 22 years, there's a finite amount team to go around globally (and there's also a finite amount of talent so, by no means do I expect expansion to be a good answer), but, this is a prestige project for an area with massive inequalities, plenty of things to fix, plenty of other things on the wish list. 
Renderings look neat, no more do I expect my words here to affect anything than who they'd draft, and so on.  I'm glad it's not a new stadium, don't need a new stadium and don't need to bulldoze anything historic out of laziness (looking at you, Kansas City). 


Source: http://absolutepanthers.blogspot.com/fe ... ts/default