Rendering via MANICA
By Sam Kmack | Arizona Republic
The economic impact of Tempe’s $2.1 billion development deal with the Arizona Coyotes “will be a net drain, not a net gain” on city coffers, according to a report released Monday by the nonprofit Grand Canyon Institute.
Dave Wells, a doctor in political economy and public policy and serves as research director at the nonpartisan think tank, conducted the analysis. GCI wasn’t paid to conduct the study and it recruited seven other “well-known economists with a strong background in this field” to review the report before it was published.
The bulk of it focused on the project’s proposed arena and music venue. Wells contends that those pieces are the reason why Tempe is using new tax dollars generated on-site to finance the start-up costs, an incentive that has only been used for one other project in the city: the creation of Tempe Town Lake.
One of his biggest findings is that Tempe would collect about a third of the tax revenue that it would divert to incentivize the Coyotes arena and music venue.
