Super Land Use Bowl

In class, we started off the week with a quick session of Current Events in Land Use (aka, what-can't-Festa-turn-into-a-land-use-issue).  The topic?  Super Bowl.  The students were prepared.  Here's what they came up with:

The weather.  Of course that was on everyone's mind last week all around the country, with blizzards in the northeast and midwest, and even a snow day in Texas.  But Dallas had it particularly rough, affecting travel both to and around the DFW metroplex.  When the Super Bowl is held in New Jersey in 2014, the weather may be worse, but I predict that it won't cause as many problems as it did in Dallas because it isn't (usually) rational for a city like Dallas to make the local government investments in snowplows, employees, and materials (salt) that will be on hand in NJ.

The parties.  The worst weather was earlier in the week, so not that big a deal, right?  I didn't realize this until the big game came to Houston in 2004, but the Super Bowl brings a full 1-2 weeks of celebrities, money, and parties--everything from huge VIP bashes to public street parties.  Unlike any other sports event that I know of.  And these things take lots of permits, approvals, resources, and land use coordination with local governments.  I even have it on good authority from a DFW land use prof that there were private helicopter services to take people from party to party.  I remember my very first assignment as an associate was to research the Houston sign code for a client who wanted to do a lot of temporary advertising during the Super Bowl festivities.  Probably lots of SOB issues too.

The stadium issue.  I'm sure you've all heard about controversies over sports teams' demanding new facilities, and the debate over whether the projects prove as economically beneficial as promised.  The nearby baseball Ballpark at Arlington was built in the early 1990s using public funding and eminent domain (under the supervision of then-owner George W. Bush).  Apparently the same tactics were used for the recently-built (just in time for the team to not play in the Super Bowl!) Cowboys Stadium.  Another land use issue is the location--out in the suburbs.  One student told me that team owner Jerry Jones tried to get it built close to downtown, but for issues of either land assembly or zoning and permitting (or maybe tax issues too), it couldn't get done.

I'll add one more: the team names.  I take no side in the Clowney-Edwards debate at Property Prof Blog (though I did see a "Cheesheads for Obama" pin at the junior scholars conference in Albany).  But I like the fact that these two team names say something about their cities' histories, and of course, land uses: Pittsburgh is obviously a steel town, and Green Bay's team is named after its meat-packing industry.

So that was in land use class.  In my Property I classes, I simply noted that at the end of last week I predicted that the final score would be Packers 31, Steelers 24; and that the actual score was Packers 31, Steelers 25.  So there!

Matt Festa