At the Dallas Cowboys stadium that will open for the next NFL season, what catches your eye -- no, what makes your jaw drop -- might be the 60-yard-long video screen that hangs from the translucent, movable roof.
At the New York Mets ballpark that will open April 13, it might be the soaring open-air rotunda that honors Jackie Robinson.
Yet for sports fans caught in the grip of an increasingly ugly recession, the most stunning feature of the newest generation of sports venues might be the price tag.
A quick tally of sports facilities being proposed or already under construction coast to coast easily adds up to a cumulative $10 billion -- a figure equal to a fourth of California's budget deficit for the coming fiscal year. And most of those buildings in the construction pipeline are on a grand scale.
The $1.3-billion Yankee Stadium that will open April 6, for example, will have 56 luxury suites, 410 party suites, a martini bar, a sports bar, 1,100 flat-panel high-definition video monitors in addition to the monster big screen parked in center field. It will boast a high-end steakhouse and a Hard Rock Cafe decorated with such attractions as the sequined Dodgers uniform that Elton John wore during his sold-out 1975 performance at Chavez Ravine.
Jerry Jones' $1.2-billion Cowboys Stadium, the Taj Y'All of the sports world, comes with 200 luxury suites and -- though they probably won't be enough in a stadium that can squeeze in 100,000 fans -- an unprecedented 1,600 toilets.
But the construction flurry evident in such places as Minneapolis, Miami and Kansas City masks the hard reality created when the global financial markets' meltdown ended an era of easily obtainable financing.
"Everyone, including bond investors, are reading the same headlines," said Tom Doe, whose Concord, Mass.-based Municipal Market Advisors offers consulting services to municipalities. "They see the Yankees spending $400 million on three players, and then wonder, given the economy, are they going to fill all those seats, will anyone pay for the luxury suites and will there still be a naming rights deal."
Stadium and arena construction is a cyclical business, and many big league franchises managed to open facilities or complete expensive renovations before the credit crunch occurred, according to Bill Squires, a New Jersey-based consultant and past president of the Stadium Managers Assn.
But for some projects, it's now a waiting game.
