Oklahoma City, a blueprint for the future?

[mugofbeer]

I'd like to see them start planning a regional light rail system and collect for that in advance. As long as it could be written into the tax that its revenues could not be used for other purposes, it could be a prudent way to go.

[bchris02]

At some point, the Thunder will need a new arena. But I disagree that that will be 2025. That would be just 15 years after the most recent renovation. It's only 10 years from now. Currently the Thunder has a perfectly nice NBA arena. It has everything that the big boys have -- luxury suites, player amenities, HD television broadcast equipment, modern electronics, etc. The fact that we got a hell of a deal on it (got the land for dirt cheap, built when construction costs were low) doesn't make it a sub-par arena.

I'm thinking we are probably going to get to about 2040 before we really have to worry about building a new arena. Now that's impossible to truly predict, because it might get hit by a tornado tomorrow or there might be some problem with the structure where we can't fit in the anti-gravity court and laser backboards when they get invented. But the reason we had a huge number of new stadiums and arenas built in recent years is because the old ones didn't have luxury suites. So an arena that was renovated in 1995 (like the Key Arena in Seattle) was a victim of horrible timing. It's like somebody who bought one of those projection screen TVs a few months before HDTVs came out.

Until the Chesapeake has some sort of structural problem come up, or some brand new thing appears that the Chesapeake can't be retrofitted to incorporate, I think we are safe.

This x100

The Chesapeake won't need completely replaced until something new catches on that it can't be retrofitted with or until there are actual structural issues with the arena. There should be no need to build a new arena simply to have a new arena.

If the Thunder does ask for a new arena, it won't be 2025. I agree that 2040 is a more realistic proposition. In regards to other cities that replaced their arenas after around 30 years, its important to look a little deeper and ask why they replaced them. It's different for different cities, but every time it was to meet a standard that the Peake already meets.

[Spartan]

You guys need to look up the time value of money....


Bond these things out. MAPS isn't a bad model but it should be a revenue source (a remarkably predictable one) that we tie to a separate bond issuance, and start all the projects at once.

The problems I've seen from revenue-backed bonds are when a certain project is predicted to affect an increase in revenue collections from an existing tax that won't be changed. I see no downside toward introducing a bond measure to the MAPS model...

[Laramie]

Not very knowledgeable on the way bonds are financed; however, the MAPS model has proven that many of these projects will be debt free upon completion.

The only draw back--when the bids come in that far exceed the projected budget.