Take Your Swing

A tale of three cities who took a shot at sports tourism -- and knocked it out of the park

We’ve been writing about the power of planning in local government the last few weeks. We’ll continue to focus on it today because it’s fundamental to governing well and that’s the raison d’être of GGF.

It’s also in ridiculously short supply. I look at our federal government and want to throw up because all the planning by elected leaders appears to be focused on gaining political power, and none on actual governing.

Planning is optimized when it directs an organization toward a vision. Today, we begin a series on three cities that pursued audacious visions, and the astonishing results that followed. They are stories of how success builds on success, the importance of partnerships, and the vital necessity of political courage.

Since the World Series was in Arlington, Texas, this week — congrats, Rangers! — I thought it would be instructive to share how that happened. And I’m not talking about how the Rangers beat my Houston Astros to advance to the World Series. I’m talking about how Major League Baseball got to Arlington in the first place. It’s an amazing story. My friends at the City of Arlington created a five-part series, Journey to Baseball Town, that captures the 13-year odyssey that resulted in the Washington Senators decamping for Texas in 1971. Here’s the series trailer.

Don’t go watch the whole series just yet. If you do, I’m pretty sure you’ll do what I did — binge watch all five episodes in one sitting. It’s local government storytelling at its absolute finest. You’ll be so moved you’ll likely forget to come back to GGF and get the rest of the story.

The series shares the vision and relentless pursuit of big league ball by Tom Vandergriff, the “boy mayor” of Arlington. He was all of 25 years old (hence the nickname) when first elected in 1951, when Arlington’s population stood at 8,000. He served 26 amazingly consequential years. His vision wasn’t just sports — he was also instrumental in landing a General Motors plant that opened in 1954 — but we’ll focus on his pursuit of Major League Baseball because it’s so enlightening.

A brief history

Lots of folks in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex were after a Major League Baseball team in 1950s and 1960s. The area was experiencing massive population growth and there was ample fan base to support a franchise. Another “boy mayor,” Roy Hofeinz, finagled an expansion franchise for Houston in 1960 and then worked to block DFW’s efforts to land a franchise of its own, claiming all of Texas as the Astros’ market. Undeterred, Vandergriff kept plugging way, eventually overcoming more political opposition — this time in the form of the freaking president, Richard Nixon, and influential members of the U.S. Congress — to persuade the Washington Senators to move to Arlington in 1971.

The Texas Rangers initially played home games in a quickly-expanded Turnpike Stadium. Vandergriff and city leaders had the foresight to build the then-minor league stadium so it could be expanded to house an MLB team. (See — planning pays off!) After the expansion, it was renamed Arlington Stadium and was the Rangers’ home until 1993, when The Ballpark at Arlington opened. The Ballpark was a state-of-the-art facility for the time, financed in part by a sales tax increase approved by 65 percent of voters in a January 1991 election.

An amazing present

Landing the Rangers, which followed the 1961 opening of Six Flags Over Texas, set in motion a series of developments that even a visionary like Vandergriff would have been hard-pressed to think possible. When the Dallas Cowboys decided Texas Stadium, in nearby Irving, no longer met their needs, they chose Arlington for their new home, AT&T Stadium, which opened in 2009. Dominos continue to fall, and today the area is known as The District, per the City of Arlington website:

With massive events and a million things to do and see throughout the year, we are home to such giants like the Dallas Cowboys’ world-class AT&T Stadium, Six Flags Over Texas & Six Flags Hurricane Harbor, Choctaw Stadium and the Esports Stadium & Expo Center. We are also home to the Texas Rangers’ new Globe Life Field and Texas Live! entertainment complex, including Live! by Loews upscale hotel resort, International Bowling Museum & Hall of Fame and the Arlington Convention & Visitors Bureau. Coming soon in 2024, we welcome the National Medal of Honor Museum, Loews Arlington Hotel & Convention Center and One Rangers Way.

I attended a conference at Live! by Loews this summer, so got to experience The District up close and personal. Good lord. (And I mean that in a good way, Lord.) My hotel room looked out onto Jerry World (as some detractors call AT&T Stadium; others prefer the Death Star) which I toured. Mind completely blown, and I say that as a born and bred Houstonian who loves to hate the Cowboys. We also caught a Rangers game at Globe Life Field. It’s another amazing, fan-friendly facility.

Did I mention both facilities are worth north of $1 billion? And both facilities were financed in part by the City, through voter-approved initiatives. Clearly, the good people of Arlington (at least, a majority of those who vote) understand the benefits of these kinds of sports facilities. They are integral to the economic base in Arlington. They create thousands of jobs and import revenue into the community.

But how much revenue? Conservatively, I’d call it a 💩 ton. Others are more precise.

Each home World Series game at Globe Life Field was projected to generate $12 million to $14 million in direct spending, according to Brent DeRaad, chief executive officer of the Arlington Convention and Visitors Bureau. (So shame on the Rangers for closing out the D-backs in five games!)

But to call them just sports facilities misses the point. AT&T Stadium hosted three Taylor Swift concerts this spring, drawing more than 210,000 attendees. Beyoncé sold out the stadium for her Renaissance Tour last month. Elton John played to more than 38,000 at Globe Life Field for his Goodbye Yellow Brick Road tour last fall.

Just spit balling here (WARNING: former journalist doing math), but if a big deal baseball game at 40,500-capacity Globe Life Field generates $12 million to $14 million, then the 210,000 Swifties likely brought in about five times that much, or in the neighborhood of $67 million. In his Wildest Dreams I doubt Mayor Vandergriff could have envisioned that. Or this …

She’s kind of a big deal. Credit: @poppinswift

What does that mean for residents and businesses in Arlington, i.e., taxpayers? The City estimates half of its $93 million in annual sales tax revenue comes from people who live outside Arlington, said Jay Warren, Communications and Legislative Affairs Director. So that’s more than $46 million a year to fix streets, pay cops and firefighters, and maintain parks that doesn’t come out of local pocketbooks.

And there are myriad benefits that won’t show up on the City’s balance sheet. Jay shared a few examples, just from the Eras Tour dropping into town.

“We temporarily renamed the street in front of the stadium Taylor Swift Way,” Jay said. “We got a road sign made up and positioned it lower than usual so people could take pictures in front of it. It did great engagement on social media. People loved that thing. We also gave her the key do the city, which doesn’t strike me as overly innovative, but that got almost as much love on social media from the Swifties. They thought that was the most amazing thing.”

Of personal significance to Jay, who is a past chair of the Arlington Museum of Art, was when Swift’s people called his people to let them know they’d like to place an Eras Tour exhibit there.

“So we had a four month long show with Taylor Swift,” Jay said. “It was the biggest one we ever had in terms of revenue, for sure.”

You can’t buy that kind of goodwill for a community. But you can earn it, if you diligently, relentlessly, methodically chase after a vision. God bless Tom Vandergriff and government leaders like him.

Now go watch that series on the Journey to Baseball Town.

When watching it, I thought about the famous speech by Teddy Roosevelt, delivered in Paris about 18 months after he left office.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Next week, we’ll look at another Metroplex city that dared greatly in the sports game and is also winning big.

Onward and Upward.