Here’s a long and interesting story about minor league ballpark construction. About the gigantic boom in new parks between 1993 and 2003 and how that boom cost communities so much more than the backers of the ballparks initially promised. In some places -- like Ramapo, New York -- that cost was multiple times what was promised and has even led to an FBI investigation into it all.
After reading this, let’s go to the tally board: that’s 1,497 examples of publicly-financed ballparks not being good economic deals and, what, like four or five that ended up being pretty cool?
