The one Wisconsin election that was never in doubt yesterday was Senator Herb Kohl’s re-election. But everything else about Kohl has been filled with doubt and uncertainty.
Is Kohl going to sell the Milwaukee Bucks? Will he limit buyers to those who are committed to keeping the franchise in Milwaukee? Will there be a new basketball arena to replace the Bradley Center? If not, can the Bradley Center be renovated sufficiently to allow the Bucks to be financially viable? How will this be paid for? All of those questions have been in limbo because Kohl wanted to get his re-election safely behind him. We’re now out of limbo.
Kohl has apparently been thinking about selling the Bucks for years. He even had a deal with Michael Jordan before reneging three years ago. It seems very likely that the team is on the market now. The challenge will be finding someone willing to keep the team in Milwaukee. For all of Kohl’s political shortcomings, it can’t be denied that he has saved NBA basketball in Milwaukee. He is personally committed to keeping the Bucks here, but he may be the only rich guy in the state who has that commitment.
It is unlikely a buyer who will vow to keep the team here can be found for the Bucks given the uncertainty of the arena situation. A new owner who promises not to move the team has no leverage to get a stadium deal. In addition, limiting your options to Milwaukee means excluding cities like Las Vegas that are crying for an NBA team. This means if Kohl sells, he is likely to get much less than top dollar.
As for the arena situation, it is impossible for me to fathom a scenario that results in taxpayers building a new arena. If the Bradley Center is to be replaced, it will have to be done with private dollars. Renovating the current arena is politically possible. It will require developing adjacent property and issuing governmentbacked bonds. The Bradley Center is surrounded on three sides by vacant lots and parking structures. Nearby property is on the verge of major development. Selling that land and sharing in future development could produce a revenue stream to pay off bonds to upgrade the arena. This could all be done without an increase in local taxes. It’s the only viable option.
The problem is that Kohl has never come up with a plan or even said if he wants the Bradley Center improved. He has been so afraid of his own political shadow that he hasn’t made clear what he wants done with the Bradley Center. A new owner who doesn’t face voters won’t have that problem. An even bigger problem is the Milwaukee leadership void. Mayor Tom Barrett is stunningly devoid of any vision for the city. It’s hard to imagine him ramrodding any kind of effort.
Next door, the financially struggling convention center is run by a separate board with its own petty interests. Local business leaders all know that something has to be done, but absent any direction from Kohl or Barrett, they don’t have anything to rally around. The Greater Milwaukee Committee used to be the organization that would try to solve big problems like this, but that group has become virtually invisible the last few years.
The whole Bucks situation is likely to explode within months. Kohl will either sell the team or make it clear he needs a new arena or a renovated Bradley Center to keep it here. Unlike earlier stadium battles involving the Packers and Brewers (two teams that were never going to move), if the Bucks situation isn’t resolved, it is very likely NBA basketball will leave Wisconsin.
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Wisconsin taxpayers hate building new sports arenas but we seem to love putting up convention centers. Along a 10-mile stretch of I-94 are the Waukesha County Expo Center, the State Fair Park Exhibition Hall and the Midwest Airlines Center. The Waukesha facility is doing OK, the State Fair Park facility has struggled and the downtown Milwaukee convention center has been a disaster. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the biggest is that only a nincompoop would put up three competing buildings so close to each other.
The Milwaukee convention center (called the Midwest Airlines Center) has been losing business to the similarly new State Fair Park facility. The Waukesha center competes with both and often undercuts their prices. Taxpayers own all three. That’s nuts.
In the meantime, there’s talk of expanding the money-losing Milwaukee facility. It’s coming from the same convention center board that spent $50 million to renovate the old Milwaukee Auditorium and rename it the “Milwaukee Theatre.” They did this because the Auditorium was a never-used old dump. The Milwaukee Theatre is beautiful but just as never-used. It’s never used because Milwaukee already has about nine other performing arts venues competing for the same acts. If we hadn’t burned through hundreds of millions on these money pit convention centers and theatres, saving the Bucks wouldn’t be so much of a challenge.