High Stakes: Big Time Sports and Downtown Development

Unlike so many other cities around the country, Columbus citizens gave a firm “no” to the proposal that public money be used to build an arena to attract an expansion professional hockey team and a soccer stadium to keep a professional franchise. Yet, both structures are now a permanent part of Columbus’s landscape. High Stakes is the inside story of how a coalition of the city’s movers and shakers successfully did an end-run around the electorate to build these sports complexes. As it turned out, everybody appears to have won: taxpayers were relieved of any funding obligation, the coalition got the new facilities, and the new arena jumpstarted downtown redevelopment. Now, the Columbus case is being touted as the model of how to use professional sports to improve a city’s downtown with minimal taxpayer expense. Professional sports have become a primary tool for the downtown redevelopment of many large cities. High Stakes portrays in vivid detail the twists and turns as this unlikely group fought doggedly to make their dream—and Columbus’s prosperous future—a reality.