As some South Carolina legislators try to object to giving public money to Panthers multi-billionaire owner David Tepper, Tepper is threatening to take his ball and stay home.
Via Jourdan Rodrigue of the Charlotte Observer, Tepper said Wednesday he was perfectly happy to build his new practice facility in Charlotte instead of just across the state border in Rock Hill.
“We’d like to be there. Hopefully they help us out there,” Tepper said. “But I could be with a [practice] bubble and a cafeteria in Charlotte, too. So it’s up to them,”
A bill which would give the Panthers $115 million in tax breaks in return for building a practice facility about 20 miles south of their stadium has met with some resistance (as public handouts for billionaires are wont to do).
The Panthers are looking at a large parcel of land, on which they’d build an indoor facility, practice fields, a sports medicine center, and a hotel (and a lot of other development to funnel money Tepper’s way).
“It’s going to cost us a lot of money to go down to South Carolina,” Tepper said. “We’re going to have to put out real money to go down there. So it’s not like we get that money from South Carolina, and that’s it. There’s a lot of money in a facility that we have to invest.
“They’ll have to make a decision whether they want it or not . . . I’ll stay in Charlotte. I could stay home.”
North Carolina hasn’t offered them anything to try to entice them to build on their side of the border, which is why Tepper was eager to be a part of South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster’s inaugural committee.
State Sen. Dick Harpootlian has been the loudest in opposition to the bill, calling it a “massive piece of corporate welfare to benefit a single corporation and its billionaire owner.”
According to Avery Wilks of The State in Columbia, debate and a potential vote on the bill has been pushed back to Thursday.
