Chase Field turns 10 years old at the end of this month, and supporters say the baseball park is a hit in the redevelopment of downtown Phoenix.

Chase Field and the neighboring US Airways Center are considered MVPs in the total economic picture, attracting more than $3 billion in new construction and redevelopment downtown.

US Airways Center opened in 1992 as America West Arena. Chase Field debuted March 31, 1998, as Bank One Ballpark. Both openings cranked up the rate of downtown redevelopment, according to Phoenix Suns Chairman Jerry Colangelo.

"The reasons for them being built, and the impact they've had on our downtown, were immense," he says.
Dressed in a dark blue pin-striped suit and a yellow tie, Colangelo watches from the center-field concourse as singers audition on the field for the chance to belt out the National Anthem at upcoming games.

"It was all part of a rebirth in building a new Phoenix," he says.

Both sports venues were built for teams headed by Colangelo. He was approached in 1994 to lead the charge for a Major League Baseball team for Phoenix, and the Arizona Diamondbacks debuted in 1998.
Critics of publicly financed sports facilities still have their doubts.

Arizona Tax Research Association President Kevin McCarthy opposed the special county sales tax that paid for the ballpark. He also questions whether sports venues create new money.

"More often than not, you're moving money around in the system that's already there," McCarthy says.
The most recent analysis, calculated in 2001, estimates the region's economy receives more than $108 million a year in revenue generated by the ballpark. Of the total $370 million construction cost, $238 million came from taxpayers via a Maricopa County sales tax. The Diamondbacks made up the difference.

The quarter-cent sales tax started in early 1995 and expired in November 1997.

That report was prepared by Elliott D. Pollack and Co. for the Maricopa County Stadium District. A new analysis will be prepared in 2009.

Chase Field is owned by the Stadium District, which is governed by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. The district leases the ballpark to the Diamondbacks.

Proponents note there is more to a sports arena than sports. In its party suites, on the concourses and on the field, the ballpark leases space for high school proms, weddings, birthday parties, soccer games, concerts, business meetings, conferences, trade shows, conventions, job fairs, and monster truck and motocross events.

Collectively, those events broaden the venue's economic usefulness while attracting a large cross-section of Valley residents to a part of Phoenix they otherwise might not visit.

"A facility like that, where you have roughly 80 events a year, brings life to the streets that creates the great urban setting," says Dan Klocke, director of the Downtown Phoenix Partnership.
Next door, US Airways Center hosts ice skating, wrestling, corporate meetings and concerts.
Chase Field has hosted everything from a Black Sabbath concert (which attracted about 35,000) to a GoDaddy.com event in 2007 (for about 5,000 clients). The wide variety of events helps strengthen the collective economic and societal bonds of the community, not just sports fans, says Bill Scalzo, a retired deputy county manager.

"You have to step outside of what the norm is and start doing new things, and that's what I think has helped Phoenix as a whole change," he says.
Scalzo was part of the team that negotiated the quarter-cent county sales tax that helped pay for the ballpark.

Klocke says no single facility can jump-start a sagging downtown by itself. "However, it's going to stimulate other things which, combined, makes your downtown great."

Since Chase Field opened 10 years ago, downtown Phoenix has undergone rapid redevelopment. New projects expected to open include the light rail system, the expanded Phoenix Convention Center, the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel, new buildings on Arizona State University's downtown campus, and the CityScape mixed-use project at Central Avenue and Washington Street.

"The ballpark is a catalyst that has helped revitalize the downtown," says Julie Schweigert, executive director of the Stadium District.
"We've had incredible things happen in the last decade, but the next decade will put it over the top," says Colangelo, who sold his controlling interest in the Diamondbacks in 2004.


Author: Mike Padgett
Source: The Business Journal