{"id":329129,"date":"2026-06-09T13:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T13:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/329129\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T13:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T13:36:07","slug":"plano-just-approved-how-much-money-exactly-for-a-new-dallas-stars-arena-field-of-schemes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/329129\/","title":{"rendered":"Plano just approved how much money exactly for a new Dallas Stars arena? \u2013 Field of Schemes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t make it to this week\u2019s annual sports economics conference in Maryland that starts this morning, but a special guest blogger has offered to report back on the stadium papers presented there, so please tune back in later today for that. (UPDATE: now underway<\/a>!) In the meantime, I\u2019ve taken on the task of figuring out exactly what the Plano city council approved yesterday<\/a> for a new $1 billion Dallas Stars arena development in the north Dallas suburb. Piecing it together from various news reports, mostly a useful explainer from the Dallas Morning News<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The council unanimously approved creating a tax increment financing district that would siphon off all new property tax revenue from the arena and surrounding development<\/a> \u2014 described as \u201cother sports and entertainment venues, retail, restaurants, residential development, public spaces and related infrastructure improvements\u201d \u2014 for 41 years, with this TIF providing an estimated $700 million that would be used to pay off bonds for the Stars\u2019 arena.
\nThe city would own the site and the arena, while Stars owner Tom Gaglardi would lease it for terms that \u201care to be negotiated.\u201d Gaglardi and partner developers Levin Holdings and Cawley Partners would co-own the rest of the development<\/a> in the TIF district, with their property taxes kicked back to Gaglardi to help pay for the arena.
\nThe council approved an upcoming public vote to create a \u201cvenue tax\u201d to provide additional funding for the arena \u2014 but while that normally means a ticket tax, in this case, the Morning News reports, \u201cthe city could ask voters to consider a combination of several kinds of taxes, aimed at visitors, on things like car rentals, hotel occupancy, event parking, event admissions and facility use per game and player.\u201d Unlike a ticket tax, which mostly ends up coming out of team owners\u2019 pockets<\/a>, much of that would money that would actually drain the public treasury.<\/p>\n

Hockey Reddit, meanwhile, is already LOLing<\/a> at the prospect of the Stars trying to better their finances by leaving downtown for a less easily accessible location for many residents, though the money from the real estate play should help defer some of those concerns. (Best comment so far: The team should be renamed \u201cThe Slightly Farther North Stars<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

None of this is set in stone, as Gaglardi has as yet only issued a nonbinding letter of intent, plus that lease agreement needs to be negotiated and any new taxes voted on. All we can say for sure is that the city would be out at least $700 million in tax breaks \u2014 money that normally would go to paying for public services to support a new development \u2014 plus potentially hundreds of millions more in new \u201cvenue\u201d taxes plus possibly additional tax exemptions on the city-owned arena, all of which could easily push the public cost to more than $1 billion.<\/p>\n

In exchange, Plano would ensure the presence of the Stars for 30 years, at least assuming the eventual lease doesn\u2019t contain an out clause allowing them to leave or demand new upgrades later, hard to say since it isn\u2019t written yet! But here\u2019s Stars president Brad Alberts talking about how committed his organization is to this agreement:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s the wedding. We\u2019re planning for the wedding,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a good way to think about it. Can we walk away from the wedding? Sure. Are we intending to? No.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that\u2019s what you like to hear from your fianc\u00e9! We\u2019ll likely hear more in coming months in the run-up to that arena vote, though it\u2019s always possible we won\u2019t find out for sure until the last minute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I didn\u2019t make it to this week\u2019s annual sports economics conference in Maryland that starts this morning, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":["post-329129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}