06 October 2024

Smith Entertainment Group (Utah Jazz and Utah Hockey Club owners) -- Sports, Not the Arts, Are Driving a New Vision for Downtown Salt Lake City

In accordance with the state’s Capital City Revitalization Zone Act, the Council’s vote designates Smith Entertainment Group (Utah Jazz and Utah Hockey Club owners) as the project participant and solidifies the agreement’s terms, including the district’s boundaries, sales tax revenue uses and several public benefits in exchange for sales tax revenue.

AI OVERVIEW: Ryan and Ashley Smith are the owners of Smith Entertainment Group (SEG):
  • Ryan Smith: The chairman of SEG, Smith is a billionaire businessman and the owner of the Utah Jazz and Utah Hockey Club. He also co-owns Real Salt Lake with David Blitzer. Smith's sports ownership portfolio is one of the fastest-growing in the country.
  • Ashley Smith: The co-owner of SEG. 
SEG's teams are worth roughly $5.5 billion. 
Smith's sports interests include: 
  • Utah Jazz: A National Basketball Association (NBA) team 
  • Utah Hockey Club: A National Hockey League (NHL) team in Salt Lake City 
  • Real Salt Lake: A Major League Soccer (MLS) team co-owned with David Blitzer 
  • Utah Royals: An NWSL franchise that Smith revived in 2023 
Smith is also the executive chairman and co-founder of Qualtrics, an experience management company based in Provo, Utah. 



Sports, Not the Arts, Are Driving a New Vision for Downtown Salt Lake City

A proposal to remake the area would please the owner of the city’s N.B.A. and N.H.L. teams. But others, including classical musicians, aren’t so thrilled.

8 min read

People playing instruments on a stage with an audience watching them.


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J. Chuck Coughlin, President of High Ground, had this to say about Ryan in April 2016

"After nearly eight years at our firm, Ryan began his new career today as the Government Relations Coordinator for Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.  
All of his colleagues here at High Ground cannot be more pleased for him and for the Airport Authority; they are getting a wonderful human being and we still have a great friend.. .  
< It was during Ryan’s father’s initial campaign for Mayor of Mesa in 2007-08 that we first met him.
 He was working tirelessly for his father’s campaign and I joked with him that he was like a Mormon on a mission.  Everything I needed to know about Ryan I learned in that campaign: tireless and kind, he exuded a genuine warmth for everyone around him. And after that successful campaign, we happily adopted him and it was a blessing for both parties ever since. . . "
Here's a link to High Ground to see what they do >>
http://www.azhighground.com/shaping-arizona-policy/ 
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Billionaire NBA Owner Ryan Smith Scores Some Currency -- $900-Million Salt Lake City Revamp Deal

Software billionaire Ryan Smith has big plans for his sports empire. 
He wants the NBA's Utah Jazz to play in a revamped arena, flanked by bustling plazas and in the shadow of a new skyscraper. 
Local lawmakers have offered $900 million to make sure that happens in Salt Lake City.




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THE DEAL: Smith Entertainment Group — owner of the Jazz, two pro soccer teams and a yet-unnamed National Hockey League club — is proposing a makeover of the city’s downtown that includes a remodeled arena, new hotel and a residential tower that could become the city’s tallest. 

Residents and visitors would subsidize the development through a higher sales tax, the proceeds of which would mostly flow to Smith’s group.

Not everyone likes the idea. 
The longest-serving member of the city’s planning commission, Bree Scheer, believes it to be a sweetheart deal with no major benefit for the municipality’s more than 200,000 residents. 

“My preference as an urban planner is that we have sports,” Scheer said. “But I don’t see giving away $900 million to the sports guy and giving the land and just rolling over. Because he’s going to make a ton of money.” 

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Most of the subsidy would be spent revamping the existing downtown sports arena, the Delta Center. But the development will also facilitate new business opportunities and cultural happenings and generally enliven the area, a spokesperson for Smith’s group wrote in an emailed statement.

“Smith Entertainment Group is committed to reimagining downtown Salt Lake City to help ensure a vibrant, thriving downtown urban core for generations to come,” the SEG spokesperson said. 

Sports owners have long pit cities against one another in attempts to get public funding for stadiums. In April, voters in Missouri rejected a $2 billion subsidy for a stadium renovation for the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League and a new ballpark for the Royals of Major League Baseball. Lawmakers in neighboring Kansas then hurried to pass a bill allowing for their state to do what Missouri would not.
The deal that brought an NHL team to Salt Lake City came after voters in Arizona declined to help the Coyotes build a new arena there.
David Berri, a sports economist and professor at Southern Utah University, said $900 million is a hefty subsidy for something that will not be very lucrative for the taxpayers footing the bill. Deals like this don’t really generate economic growth for cities, he said, but are better thought of as something like a public park. 
“Salt Lake City would desperately like to be thought of as a major city, so they need a basketball team,” Berri said. 

“It’s unfair because we’re shuffling taxpayer money to someone who’s fabulously wealthy.” 
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The NBA Draft is just two days away and the Utah Jazz finally announced their TV deal with a local station in Salt Lake City, as well as a PPV streaming option. Is this the right path for the Utah ...
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