On my way there, I drove past Lincoln Financial Field, built on so much promise and public financing, a place where most fans can't score an Eagles ticket despite its being built with $171 million of our money.
Major League Soccer is not football, at least not when it comes to American dollars. Its teams posted an operating loss last year. Attendance is paltry. However, the league shares one trait with football: the ability to get citizens to underwrite its wishes with little opposition.
The $115 million yet-to-be-named Chester stadium is being built with $77 million of public funding - $47 million from the state, $30 million from Delaware County.
For those of you doing the math at home, that's $4,132.23 a seat.
It's public welfare for rich people.
The team will play 18 home and two exhibition games - roughly 40 hours of play. And the arena will host a few concerts and festivals, for 31 events total.
That's one month of days out of a dozen.
Soccer to us
I like soccer. Perhaps you do, too. But why should we be underwriting the game, and in this economy?
Oh, right, jobs creation, community revitalization.
"Those 'public impact statements' are fantasy documents," says Villanova professor Rick Eckstein, coauthor of Public Dollars, Private Financing. "Look at South Philadelphia. If any place was the poster child for all sports stuff, it's South Philadelphia. With all those sports arenas, the place should be teeming with economic development. What do you have? A Holiday Inn."
With so few home games, "the economic impact of a sports team has the same impact as a midsized supermarket," Eckstein says. "With soccer, maybe we're talking a bodega."
He's not joking.
Tina Johnson spent the first five years of her life in Chester, traveled the world, then came back four years ago. She's president of Chester's Community Grocery Coop, one of the only places residents can buy quality produce in the winter.
