It looks like city taxpayers will get stuck with the tab for providing at least 80 police officers per event to direct traffic at the new uptown arena when it opens in the spring of 2005. Although the Bobcats will reap all the profits from 140-plus events to be held each year at the city-owned arena — from NBA games to the circus — traffic control will be provided free of charge by the City of Charlotte.
City spokesperson Rick Davis says the city doesn’t yet know if it will pull officers off regular patrol duty to do traffic control at the arena of if it will put extra officers on duty on event days. Davis says the city does not yet know how many man-hours this will consume or what it will cost the city annually.
Davis said that the city won’t make any decisions about increasing the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s budget to cover the costs of providing traffic control until it begins its FY 2006 budget deliberations.
The traffic-control arrangement with the Bobcats will differ from the one the city has with the Panthers. The NFL team pays the city $26 an hour for each on-duty officer who works traffic before and after games, plus $5 an hour on the officers’ cars. Most officers work six to eight hours total per game, directing traffic before and after.
Using those numbers, it would have cost the Bobcats between $2 million and $2.5 million a year if the team had to pay for traffic control service at the new arena like the Panthers do at Ericsson Stadium.
Davis says the difference between its traffic control deal with the Panthers and its deal with the Bobcats is that, unlike Ericsson Stadium, where the Panthers play, the new basketball arena will be a publicly owned building — the city owns the land Ericsson Stadium sits on, but not the stadium itself — and will have 140 events annually versus eight or so football games held at the stadium.
“Traffic management within the center city for 140-plus events is not something to be left to anyone but the public sector,” said Davis. “So, no, the city is not providing anything to the Bobcats free of charge; rather, the City is providing the services for which it is responsible.”
The city paid for traffic control at the old coliseum on Tyvola Road when the Hornets occupied the building as a tenant, but the city’s financial arrangement with the team was different. The Hornets were paying $9,000 per game in rent and all expenses associated with opening the building for events. The city’s Coliseum Authority and the team split parking and food and beverage profits from the events, which offset the cost of providing police to direct traffic.
Davis said that most of the “traffic control” at the old coliseum was provided by the reversible lanes electronic system on Tyvola Road, which was installed, operated and maintained by the City.
Under the city’s deal with the Bobcats, the team will receive all profits from the events at the building and will also have to cover any losses.
It’s not unusual for cities to provide traffic control outside city-owned arenas after events. But in the case of the arena in Greensboro, the city also reaps revenues from the events. Greensboro Coliseum Deputy Director Scott Johnson says the city takes in 100 percent of the revenue generated by local events and uses it to operate the arena. It also gets to keep the parking charges event-goers pay to use the 7,000 parking spaces surrounding the facility. Aside from a small amount of parking spaces at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center on Davidson Street that will be used on event days, the city doesn’t own most of the parking spaces event-goers will use.
At Phillips Arena in Atlanta, the management company that runs the facility foots most of the bill for traffic control, except for about 12 officers who typically cover busy intersections further away from the stadium if events attract particularly large audiences, said Richard Tofani, the security director at Phillips Arena.
Contact Tara Servatius at tara.servatius@cln.com.
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2003.
