BOA renovation project named “Worst Economic Development Deal of the Year”

CHARLOTTE, NC — Despite a five win season, the Carolina Panthers and David Tepper won an award it’s just not one to celebrate.

Charlotte City Council voted over the summer to give David Tepper $650 million dollars from the city’s tourism and hospitality tax fund.

John Mozena is the president of The Center For Economic Accountability.

“It’s a combination of cost and just terrible, terrible, terrible justifications for that cost,” said Mozena.

That combo was enough for the the non-profit, watchdog group to name the Bank of America renovation deal, the “Worst Economic Development Deal of the Year”.

“This was really a deal, frankly, that that came out of not necessarily us, but also the people on the ground in Charlotte.
We heard probably more about this deal and people reaching out to us to complain about it,” Mozena explained.

Mozena said many who complained were self-proclaimed diehard Panthers fans.

“I knew in the beginning that something was going to come out that wasn’t going to be favorable for us,” said Charlotte City Councilwoman, Tiawana Brown.

Brown voted against the renovations.

“I’m overjoyed, you know, that I was I could say that I stood with the people, the masses of the people,” Brown explained.

Councilwoman Victoria Watlington voted in favor of the renovation project. She says this deal shows the current process needs to change.

“I look forward to us setting in place some new processes from a legal standpoint to make sure that council is at the table through negotiation and through signatures and execution of these contracts,” Watlington said.

This is the third time the Carolinas have won the worst development deal. The first time circles back to the Panthers and Tepper when the team moved the practice field out of Rock Hill.

“We almost didn’t give this award to this, this project just because we didn’t want to seem like we were picking on North Carolina or David Tepper and his team,” Mozena said.

Mozena said the bad deals happening around us are something we should be taking a closer look at.

“North Carolina is sort of on route to becoming one of the, if not the than one of the worst states for sort of bad, dumb, harmful economic development deals,” explained Mozena.

Mozen said overall, stadiums do not actually add economic value to the city as a whole and that all stadiums do is redistribute where people in the region spend their entertainment dollars.