ABSTRACT

Economic development practitioners often chase the next great idea to grow their economy, especially their downtowns. A project that many large cities have looked to as a panacea is the sports stadium. Smaller, mid-sized cities have also joined the stadium craze by poaching Minor League Baseball (MiLB) teams via flashy downtown stadium developments, often using the same playbook that large cities have employed. Recently, the City of Wichita, Kansas, undertook a minor league stadium project as an economic development strategy. This paper uses an urban regime theory lens to track the political deal-making and financial engineering that made it possible for Wichita to lure the “Baby Cakes” MiLB team from New Orleans. This study demonstrates that mid-sized cities use the same backroom deal-making perfected by their larger peers to push a fragile form of development that frequently makes minimal economic sense.

摘要

经济发展从业者经常追逐下一个伟大的想法来发展经济，尤其是市中心。体育场被许多大城市视为灵丹妙药。中小城市也加入了体育场热潮，通过华丽的市中心体育场开发挖走小联盟棒球 (MiLB) 球队，通常采用与大城市相同的策略。最近，堪萨斯州威奇托市作为经济发展战略实施了小联盟体育场项目。本文使用城市政权理论视角来追踪政治交易和金融工程，使威奇托能够从新奥尔良吸引“婴儿蛋糕”MiLB 团队。