“A sports franchise, or a team, is a business. You will be hard-pressed to find many cases where the local government has provided publicly owned land to other businesses,” Avila said Thursday on the House floor. “When we talk about economic development, and some people have mentioned this, do they provide as much economic development as let’s say a UPS, a Subway, Domino’s Pizza, McDonald’s, some of these other businesses that are on every corner in the community? How many employees do they employ? How much economic activity do they generate? We do not give them publicly owned land.”
The House during the past few years has virtually ignored the 2014 stadium-funding law, despite the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity saying that applications for EverBank Field in Jacksonville, Sun Life Stadium in Miami-Dade County, Daytona International Speedway, Raymond James Stadium in Tampa and a soccer stadium in Orlando had satisfied state requirements.
The state agency received just a single application, for Raymond James Stadium, for the current year.
