Tim Kelly forcefully and publicly worked against a regional growth project meant for Chattanooga. That project is bringing thousands of jobs and a $150 million investment in a mixed-use development featuring restaurants, bars, a hotel, and apartments, in addition to a state of the art stadium that will host large scale entertainment events, as well as NCAA soccer games, professional soccer games for the Chattanooga Red Wolves, and age group soccer tournaments. This investment could have been in the city limits of Chattanooga but because of his opposition based purely on personal interests and ego, it is now being built in East Ridge.
In a debate recently, Kelly compared the Red Wolves and the United Soccer League they operate under as a Taco Bell franchise. Last I checked, franchises are businesses and businesses mean jobs. But soccer aside, what he did was deny Chattanooga a $150 million investment bringing jobs and a live-work-play opportunity for our city.
Which begs the question, is this how he will respond to other investments that compete with his businesses? How can he pledge to be interested in seeing our city prosper when he clearly puts personal interests over the good of Chattanooga?
Kay Baker
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Imagine this, Chattanooga: you and a group of local entrepreneurs create a successful local sports team, that local fans adore, and that you revitalize the community’s interest in coming together to celebrate the city’s success. Oh, and you take Finley stadium off the taxpayers dole (hundreds of thousands a year) by putting it into profitability from the success of your games.
Congratulations, you’ve proven the doubters wrong and brought a popular soccer team to the heart of SEC country, and created an independent, community model that would later be replicated by teams across the United States. You should be proud.
But as the team’s fortunes soar, you attract interest from a soccer league selling franchises, the USL, which approaches you and asks if you want to convert your team into a franchise.
The catch? They require a huge upfront payment and hundreds of thousands of fees every year just for the privilege of being in their league. Sounds like a shakedown to me! If Applebees walked into the Tremont Tavern and asked them to convert, and PAY for the privilege, would any sane person do it?
Franchise payments send enormous amounts of money out of the city rather than keeping it local. In this case, it would starve the team of resources needed to invest in the city, in the team and in its fans. It would hurt the team’s ability to make decisions in the best interest of the community, and force decisions that instead benefit an out-of-town, for-profit entity, in Tampa, Florida. Since converting the city’s team to a franchise is wrong for the team, wrong for the fans and wrong for the city you love, of course you reject that deal as chairman of the club.
But instead of accepting your decision, the greedy league - hungry for a piece of the action and threatened by your independent, local business model that might just spread across the country and threaten your ability to sell your franchises - retaliates by pouring money into another team in your city in an attempt to drive you out of business. They poach your staff, go after your sponsors and attempt to starve you of resources. In a city that can barely support a single sports franchise, that lacks a hockey team or a football team, they expect residents to believe that they are bringing a second soccer team to town in good faith? Particularly when larger Knoxville, just up the road, has no team at all and would welcome a soccer team? Please.
As an owner, what do you do? Do you cheer this action and welcome their attempts to bankrupt and ultimately kill your city’s first homegrown team? Do you give in to their demands to funnel fans’ money to an out-of-town entity, putting its financial health in peril? Do you believe their hollow promises to bring millions of dollars to the city, when the only evidence of their commitment now looks like a lower-tier middle-school stadium? If a strange man showed up at your door and said, “I’m moving in. I’ll be sleeping with your wife, and eating your food, but hey, you’re welcome to stay in the spare bedroom - or just leave” - would you do it?
Of course not.
More ridiculous still is the notion that Tim Kelly, who was the CFC Chairman at the time, somehow prevented him from investing in Chattanooga. Was CFC just supposed to walk away from Finley Stadium? And if they had, how would that have created ANY new investment in Chattanooga? It would not have, clearly. Beyond that, how was Tim, a private businessman here at the time, supposed to have thwarted the Red Wolves’ attempts to locate elsewhere in Chattanooga? He could not have, and did not. Mr Martino simply took advantage of the same state incentive program in East Ridge that Mr Kelly has gotten so much grief for using for his Honda Motorcycle dealership.
If Ms. Baker wants to make this city election a referendum of Red Wolves vs. Chattanooga FC, I think she’ll find it’ll end very badly for her candidate, and her team. But even so, she ought to get her facts straight.
David Crisp