Quote:
Originally Posted by dilanesp
Absolutely. The economics of a renovation of Pimlico do not make sense, because the track only gets the huge crowds for two days a year. (On the other hand, I guess you can say that NFL teams get publicly financed palatial stadiums for 10 games a year, and LA built a theater for the Academy Awards, which is one night a year. Still, those are bad uses of public money too.)
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To be fair, NFL stadiums get used throughout the off-season for concerts, festivals, job fairs, other sports (World Cup 2026 will utilize 16 different stadiums around the country). So there's a lot of ways for those cities to recoup their investment besides football.
To your point, Pimlico doesn't do any of that. There's Preakness weekend, and that's it. There used to be an annual concert festival in the infield (usually in Sep/Oct), but that stopped a few years ago. Truth is, no one wants to be caught dead in that part of town unless there's 100,000 people and a heavy police presence with them. Spending $400m to polish a turd that will
still only see a big crowd two days a year is a ridiculous waste of money.
