Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Fixed Costs sinking the Pittsburgh Casino

By Dave Anderson:

Gambling was supposed to save everything in Allegheny County; the Penguins, the city and county general operating budgets, the libraries, the school budget and the cats stuck in a tree when the fire department is too drunk too rescue it.  Whoops.  Even after a few good weeks during the Christmas holidays when everyone needed to get out of the house and away from their family, gambling revenue has fallen back to trend levels at less than half of the state's projection and significantly less than the very optimistic projections made by the owners.  

The Tribune Review reports that the Pittsburgh Rivers Casino is being assessed at a shade under $200 million dollars.  Assuming normal millage rates for the city of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools and Allegheny County are applied against this property and that this assessment stands, this is a cash flow of approximately $6 million dollars per year split between the three entities. 

The property tax bill is an additional fixed cost to a project that is on the verge of being sunk by fixed costs.  The casino has construction bond payments of $55 million dollars this year and $75 million dollars next year.  The casino has also committed to a $7.5 million dollar payment for the Penguins arena, and now it has a $6 million dollar property tax bill.  For the first operating year, it has ~$69 million dollars in fixed costs that must be paid before the electrical bill or the first hour of wages is covered.  The fixed costs alone consume $154 million dollars in gross terminal revenue.

Just doing a straight line approximation of current revenue, the casino is projected to make approximately$162 million dollars in gross terminal revenue in its first full year of operation.  If this approximation is even remotely close to accurate, fixed expenses consume close to 95% of all revenue generated by the casino.  That is not a sustainable business model. 



Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)