Smart Growth Strategies

1. Assumptions
2. Concerns
3. Five Central Ideas

ASSUMPTIONS

SMART GROWTH details how to blend real estate and overall economic growth of the city and region via a new stadium and, more importantly, with an NFL team. There are two dynamics that have historically been unchanged regardless of people and politics, ideologies and policies, religions and races:

MACRO-level: the only constant in history is change.It can be slowed but never stopped. There are those who attempt new worlds (often called liberal or progressive) and those who attempt to raise previous favored ones (often called conservative). Too often both want to conserve or freeze in place what others would call revoltionary or reactionary. It doesn't matter. Change can't be stopped. Both goals are unrealistic.

MICRO-level:all human interaction takes place face-to-face within the concept of roles, whether shared or not, whether perceived equally or not, whether anticipaed in the same way or not, whether understood or not, but which are always expected one from another. One cannot live a role free existence. And the greatest success, personally and professionaly, comes when people don't break role.

The following assumptions are based are reflections on articles in various Southern California papers, June 22, 2002, but which are applicable to any city:

• That regardless of whether individuals or groups promote or retard growth, love or fear growth, all agree that if possible, it would be better to have agreement on directing the changes than let the forces of change go undirected, which means that a "round table" needs to be set up and the knights of the various groups ("stakeholders") encouraged to attend and to work together.
  
• Stadiums are important beyond their teams and communities. Those in warmer climes can host the Super Bowl (Southern California being the NFL's favorite spot; remember how many are coming from cold and humid East Coast and Mid-West climes in January),and other major events. The Super Bowl itself is worth $250 million to a city each time it is held (a figure based on figures of the last San Diego Super Bowl). The stadium is also about international soccer matches, motocross, concerts, and other events, all of which can generate revenue to help support the stadium for the City.
  
• No new taxes need be levied, on the average, although a small increase in a tourist tax (hotels, motels, rental cars), could be levied by a city council without needing a vote, with the key to its success being how it is presented: as a tourist/business tax, not as a tax on local residents.
  
• Any team is an important civic, cultural and financial asset to a city and region. Every team needs a home. That means a stadium.
  
• The team, in bottom line terms, has a positive net economic and quality of life impact on the city.
  

Concerns to consider:

• Stadiums and arenas mean moving large numbers of people at the same time. Transit cannot be understood properly unless the cost-benefit analysis includes all contexts: time of travel, environmental impact, regional stability, reduction in congestion, and moving people for large events. Is it worth it to the community in cost terms for everyone to support it? Done properly, we say yes. Our job is to help communities and teams get the information they need and to help them make the decisions that have to be made.
  
• There are those who so distrust others that they would prefer, in terms of one of game theories best games, "prisoner's dilemma," remain prisoners of the status quo and not change. Indeed, often they will try to hurt any building or renovation process. Given the nature of humans and the witness of history, people would be crazy not to distrust until questions are answered satisfactorily. The solution is to use a conflict resolution process that clearly lays out the rules of the game. Planning is a necessity. When planning is inclusive and allows for cooperation, conflict can be averted or resolved, as our 18 models for conflict resolution demonstrate.
  
• Shakespeare's notion that "a rose by any other rose is still a rose" fits the term "growth" as well. Whether it is called "growth," or "smart growth," or "densification," or "population growth," or "insufficient funding," or "growth in housing costs," or "smart growth financing," it still involves everyone the same way and therefore it behooves everyone to cooperate to collaboratively resolve the issues so that the issues and problems of growth can be resolved and solved.
  
• Dealing with "industrial acreage and flatland...subdividers...quality of life....soaring housing costs....decline in water quality....insufficient funding" needs to be done in such a way that all win some and lose some and none win all and none lose all. Communities often need some common ground rallying point to gather around. Major professional sports teams provide tangible intangibles that all in the wider community can get behind and support, generating civic pride and cooperation for other issues for all the stakeholders.
  
• All the major interests converge at a central point of shared interest and thus benefit from a new stadium complex: developers (economic and real estate), tourist industry (including Convention Center, airlines, travel agents, car rentals, restaurants, hotels, other teams), environmentalists, recreation spots, ocean (and lake and river) related resorts and businesses, and the great catch-all: citizen watchdogs, voters, tax payers.
  
• The four "conflicting groups" (developers, business, environmentalists, citizen watchdogs) should be seen not as opponents in a win-lose game of fighting over a community's pie, but rather points of scales seeking balance in sharing the community pie, that they are not so much in conflict as just not having yet found the common ground from which they can all work together. Communities need developers and businessmen to create the jobs that throw off the taxes and charitable giving that fund government agencies and private trusts and funds looking after the environment. Watching all of them are the citizens. Having said that, the issue becomes not so much getting a new support system as it is using the one already in place. All teams, professional and collegiate, help focus the common ground from which to deal with the serious issues of growth confronting the region.
  
• An excellent way among others to start is to think of four circles. Push them together until there is an ellipsis in the center where they all overlap. This is the common ground on which all can agree. Most common ground areas are agreed upon as being important: development (economic and real estate), jobs, environmental protection, education, housing, transportation, and public safety.
  
• From a common ground standpoint, all four (to borrow from a book title) are "indispensable enemies." At the same time they are all "comrades in arms." In the recent popular film Black Hawk Down, there is a scene that reminds us that quite often what we lack is not instruction in how to do something (some Czar of Super Planning) but rather how to cooperate and win together. Thus, in the movie, the hero says to the soldier standing nearby in shock, to "get into that truck and drive" as the driver has been shot. The soldier replies "But I'm shot too." The hero then replies, "Everybody's shot. Get in and drive." To put it in the words of wise men and women, all groups can then see why it serves each of them to take "the high road of healing and harmony," as all, really, are in the same community truck/boat/plane (choose your favorite image).
  

4 Central Ideas
Greenlight Sports Marketing marches to the drumbeat of five central ideas:

1. We are friends of the team(s) and want to help them solve their problem of how to achieve their goal of building/renovating a stadium with little or no debt and no new taxes.
   
2. We are friends of all sports fans and want to show them how to achieve their goal of positively supporting their team while we are also friends of ownership and management and want to show them how to be supportive of the community while being able to have a profitable team.
   
3. We are friends of the sports fans and are responding positively to their challenge to "show us," with our various models for how to build/renovate a stadium with only normal infrastructure public spending, how to incur little or no debt, and how to generate profits on an on-going basis; year round, so the team can stay competitive, not to mention being able, then, to stay in the community.
   
4. We are friends of everyone, responding positively to the invitation for how to hold a city conversation, by providing a series of models that could be used to facilitate such a series of resolution conversations and meetings.
   
5. Teams need to think inside the box (game day revenues at the stadium) and outside the box (meaning both those revenues outside the stadium on game day as well as non-game day revenues, which are discussed at 40 Revenue Streams in 26 Categories).

Greenlight Sports Marketing reminds everyone, including those who don't follow sports closely or not at all, that professional teams are on the same level of investment in the future as transit, real estate projects, free ways, and theater. They are part of the investment communities make to retain and attract the talented wealth-producers of the new economy. These investments benefit everyone. New wealth will fix and sustain good schools, health care, roads, compassionate social services and civic pride that cities expect and cherish. Deep down, we believe that citizens hunger for better than "good enough."

Greenlight Sports Marketing can help any team and its city bring the big four together (developers, tourist industry, environmentalists, and citizen watchdogs/voters/tax payers) to work for the benefit of "now" and for the future.