It's Third-and-Long for New Stadium

PHOENIX-Two suburbs hoping to build a new stadium to keep pro football’s Arizona Cardinals have learned that the cost of the facility would likely be eight times larger than the revenue it would generate.

In a new study released by consultants Ernst & Young, Tempe and Mesa learned that it would cost them $122 million to prepare a joint site for the football stadium and would only bring them $15.8 million in revenue over the next 30 years.

The results of the study reduce the chance that the two cities will put a stadium-related proposal on the November ballot. “I’m not excited about investing $122 million to get $15 million,” says Mesa Councilman Bill Jaffa.

The report says the project would bring in $354 million over the next three decades when inflation was considered, but to more accurately equate that to costs the figure was converted to 2000 values, which is approximately $15.8 million.

“I don’t want to see the Cardinals leave, but it’s way too much for Tempe to pay,” says Tempe Councilman Dennis Cahill. “We would need help.”

The proposed site of the joint $331-million stadium is at the southwest corner of Loop 101 and Loop 202, on the border between Tempe and Mesa and just south of the Salt River. Ernst & Young says the stadium could most likely attract and support about 1.3 million sf of offices, 125,000 sf of retail, two limited-service hotels with 125 rooms each, one full-service hotel with 400 rooms and 400 apartments.