Arena/stadium planning done right

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They’re thinking big in Carolina. The hockey Hurricanes just unveiled an ambitious $1 billion plan to develop 80 acres into a mixed use campus. That’s on top of a $300 million renovation to its PNC Arena, which sits adjacent to the North Carolina State’s football stadium.

It’s funny what you can do when you put sports facilities next to each other – located in the city proper, no less. 

Buffalo News hockey writer Mike Harrington noted the lack of progress around KeyBank Center, aside from LECOM Harborcenter and a couple of hotels.

Alumni Plaza has been untouched for more than a decade, since the French Connection statue was unveiled in 2012. Where are the statues for Dominik Hasek and Rick Jeanneret? The fire-ravaged Cobblestone district should be developed. The DL&W Railway Station behind the arena has felt like a missed opportunity since the arena opened in 1996. Now, developer Douglas Jemal has purchased the former HSBC Atrium across the street from the arena and the former Buffalo News building at Washington and Scott, a short walk away. What might be done with those?

Not to be overlooked: Much of the Memorial Auditorium site remains a hole in the ground, nearly two decades after it was demolished.

In his Politics and Other Stuff, Ken Kruly details the fiscal mess Chris Scanlon will inherit once Byron Brown scampers off to the Western Regional Off Track Betting Corp. 

Scanlon will walk into an impending financial crisis like no other that the city has ever faced.  At a minimum the city government will need to come up with at least $46 million in new revenues for the next fiscal year starting July 1, 2025.  Because of the way in which revenues were overestimated and certain expenses underestimated, the problems will become evident over the next several months, affecting the current budget too. 

Brown, meanwhile, will be laughing all the way to the bank.

The cop who dragged Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill out of his car last week is a bad apple. Six suspensions and multiple reprimands. 

The more frequently white Protestants and Catholics attend church, the more likely they are to support Donald Trump, according to polling from the Pew Research Center. 

Some 50 colleges and universities have implemented policies to throw a wet blanket over protests, Mother Jones reports. Once critic termed the new rules “a resurgence of repression on campuses that we haven’t seen since the late 1960s.”

She ate a salad with poppy seeds before giving birth, which triggered a positive result to a drug test, which resulted in authorities taking her newborn baby from her. A disturbing report from the Marshall Project. 

Online sports betting results in more bankruptcies and lower credit scores. You can bet on it. 

Jim Heaney