From Jeff Gammage’s excellent article on whether the Chester stadium deal is yet another snake oil sale for a town that's suffered way too many broken promises:

The prospective team owners, leading a St. Louis group in the contest to secure MLS's 16th team, predict a huge financial impact:

More than 2,600 temporary construction jobs and 800 permanent full-time jobs. About $19 million in annual tax revenue. An estimated $670 million in personal earnings and $335 million in taxes over time.

Those are giant numbers to a city where half the households get by on less than $25,000 a year.

And they leave sports economists shaking their heads. Whether it's Kansas City or Charlotte, Chicago or Chester, they say, the argument is always the same, and so is the result.

"Plopping down a stadium," said Temple University assistant dean Michael Leeds, coauthor of The Economics of Sports, "does nothing for a city."

It’s hard to put my finger on what rankles me most about the Chester stadium deal.

Is it that:

• Boosters of the project have refused to publicly release the study of the so-called $1.7 billion economic impact of a stadium open 35 days a year?

• State legislators are asking for cuts in the Dept. of Welfare and grumbling about a $291 million increase in the basic education budget (even though their own study says PA schools are underfunded by $4 billion) but they have no problem plunking down millions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize a $500 million soccer stadium/waterfront development in Chester?

• In one of the state poorest cities, which lacks a supermarket and where hardly any new housing has been built for almost two decades, that a stadium with a league appeal of 3 million nationwide (and that includes me) is the most enthusiasm generated for Chester since the state privatized the schools in 2000?

• Is it that the plan allegedly has artists’ drawings of “people” (Chester residents?) shopping and strolling next to “market rate” waterfront housing in a city where half the population has an average household income below $25,000?

• Is it that stadium boosters think the public has such a short memory that they're just recycling the economic myths Philadelphia’s Chinatown debunked in their successful battle against a proposed baseball stadium in 2000?

But perhaps, at least for me, the major reason the Chester stadium deal stinks is that the last time the state really “invested” in Chester was through that state takeover of the schools where they repeated lofty promises about accountability and a Chester "turnaround." In a move which many Philadelphia advocates saw as a precursor to the Philadelphia takeover a year later, the state instead used the opportunity to privatize and charterize the public school system, turning over 9 out of 10 public schools to Edison Schools Inc. Edison was booted from Chester almost two years ago after cost overruns and poor management bankrupted the system, failed to move student achievement, and contributed to the ongoing community protests.

One of the primary bankrollers of the Chester soccer stadium is James Nevels, who first headed the state takeover of Chester schools before moving onto Philadelphia and left earlier this school year after the District unveiled last year's fiscal disaster ($180 million). In other words a man who has overseen the bankruptcy of two school systems now stands to personally profit in a politically arranged stadium deal.

There is plenty of evidence of the link between decent schools and community wealth. The state had that opportunity for seven years in Chester. But was the purpose of the state takeover to really improve Chester schools, or was it simply for exploiting a generation of children for corporate profit and political posturing? There's almost no link between community wealth and stadiums.

There are many things that Chester needs and deserves – access to fresh food, good schools, and affordable housing would probably be at the top of my list and worth every penny of a half billion dollars. But a stadium open 35 days a year which is relying on a study that has never been made public whose primary boosters stand to personally profit from the deal is worth way more than a raised eyebrow.