Look Who Caught Up

Poor Fran - a day late and a dollar short again:

• The 10,000-seat, $164 million basketball arena for DePaul University that will double as an “event center” for McCormick Place will open this fall with a pair of gala fundraisers, officials said Monday.

And how well will the arena do?

• Even if the 50-booking benchmark is reached, Chicago-based sports business consultant Marc Ganis predicted that most of the events would be “economically meaningless, both to the facility and to Chicago taxpayers.”
  
  “I fully expect they will do whatever they can in the first few years to try and gin up a positive spin because this was such a foolhardy project in the first place,” said Ganis, who has opposed the project from the get-go.
  
  “It was a ridiculous use of limited public money at a time when we’re raising taxes to unprecedented levels and still see no light at the end of the tunnel. Every now and then, governments decide to build vanity projects. That’s what this is.”

At 50 shows a year, it's assumed the stadium will break even....and that hasn't been reached yet - not by a long shot.

• The studies assumed that attendance for DePaul basketball games that drew roughly 3,200 fans to All-State Arena would triple at the new venue.

Triple attendance for a team that hasn't made a tournament in how many years? Rahm pissed away tens of millions on a stadium that won't generate a dime. And if it ever actually turns a profit, they'll find something that got screwed up during the initial building process and piss that money away, too.