Properly, this too-good-to-be-true pitch raised the red flags over in the Salt Lake County executive offices. So today, when a formal proposal to funnel millions of county hotel tax money into a project that includes a stadium and entertainment complex for Real Salt Lake in Sandy is made to the County Council, those red flags should turn into a red card, disqualifying the whole project from access to the county's coffers.
The plan from Real and Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan was represented as dedicating $30 million of the county's hotel tax to the stadium's infrastructure, a relatively small amount toward the $145 million stadium and entertainment complex and a mere fraction of the $650 million commercial development Dolan hopes will spring up alongside.
That supposedly would have left $50 million in hotel tax revenue for new or improved performing arts facilities in downtown Salt Lake City and $10 million for other useful urban amenities.
Boosting downtown's arts venues has long been a dream of many city and county officials, including Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. As a result, the deal momentarily seemed to have won his support.
But Anderson's opposite number at the County Government Complex - Mayor Peter Corroon - sicced his numbers guys on the plan. They quickly figured out that just guaranteeing the bonds for the stadium contribution, which would be floated as a long-term debt with significant interest, would effectively sop up all the hotel tax money for years to come.
No deals for the extra money make sense, said county officials, because there isn't any extra money.
And even if there had been a few million sitting in the till, supporting the soccer plan now on a promise of downtown arts projects later would have been questionable at best.
With optimism that strikes us as somewhere between dreamy-eyed and delusional, plans for a downtown arts complex remain far too unfocused, with the possibility of cannibalizing local drama companies too threatening to justify a gift to a soccer project. If it receives public funding at all, the Real plan should get it from the city of Sandy.
