Bankruptcy Looms Around Sarpy County’s Ballpark Boondoggle

Today’s Omaha World-Herald provides us with an update of development around Werner Park in Sarpy County on the edge of town.  And frankly, it’s the same:  “Next verse, same as the first!”  Nothing’s happening, other than the SID used to build the infrastructure around the “Trailer Park” (as I like to refer to it) appears to be heading towards bankruptcy.  No development means that the SID can’t pay off the $12 million that was borrowed to build roads and install utilities.  Alamo Drafthouse?  Built elsewhere, closer to Omaha and the Interstate.  Pennant Place?  Didn’t happen.  Not even an Arby’s, it would seem.

Sarpy County officials make it a point to say that the ballpark itself isn’t in financial trouble.  Which is true, though their statements come with a huge asterisk.

“Our revenues are coming in even without any development at the ballpark. They’re coming in and covering our debt payments.”The asterisk?  One of the key components paying for the ballpark is a hotel tax, and that’s a tax that was used to fund other things in the past.  Nothing new there at all; I wrote about it in 2009. There isn’t any word as to what happened to the programs that used to be funded by the hotel tax, but you know it’s coming from elsewhere in the county’s tax revenue.  A big shell game.

Oh, and attendance out in BFE Sarpy County?  It still continues to be lower than the last years at Rosenblatt, averaging four more people a night in 2016 than in 2008.