Happy Friday, Athletics Nation!
J.K. Dineen at the San Francisco Chronicle surveyed experts on the increasingly popular strategy of creating infrastructure financing districts, or IFDs, to fund ballparks without public money. The idea is that building office and residential space in the surrounding area will generate new tax revenues, rather than using existing revenue streams to foot the bill.
The A’s and City of Oakland have adopted this strategy, hoping to generate over $500 million to fund infrastructure improvements at the proposed Howard Terminal ballpark site over the next 45 years. But skeptics point out that similar plans in Atlanta, Lousiville, and Washington D.