Hick-Ups!

02/27/03 Sharks are Smelling Blood in the Water.

Poor Tommy Hicks. He just moved into his multi-multi-million dollar mansion. He just shelled out almost a million to reduce the vehicular noise from the Dallas North Tollway. (What good is it to live in a castle when you can hear the masses outside your compound?) These should be the good times for the Robber Baron, but it's not working out that way of late.

Here he is -- this big tycoon who has companies all over the place. He's in the food business. Radio business. Investment business. Real estate and development. And, he's really into the professional sports business.

Five years ago, Tom Hicks was on top of the world. He owned the Mayor of Dallas. He plunked down nearly $2 million to fund his part of the arena sales tax campaign. Cheap change when you figure his share of the windfall at $60 million, plus 1/2 of the $195 Million from American Airlines "for a 30-year run, or $6.5 Million annual revenue to the Robber Barons." (see Oh, Tommy!). He had Mayor PreTend Mary Poss carrying water for him, too. Not to mention the likes of Old Al Lipscomb who would scream racism whenever anyone questioned the doings of the Robber Barons.

Then there was the huge tax abatement he got in the Fall of 1998 that included taking money from Dallas school kids, the poor of Dallas County, the indigent at Parkland Hospital, etc., etc. That's because That Former Mayor and Mayor PreTend Poss and their council crooks rushed the abatement through and got the DISD, the County Commissioners, the Hospital District, and more to participate in the tax abatement.

Remember, the arena was supposed to produce billions of real estate development and create thousands of new jobs. We will get to that.

Then That Former Mayor (who along with City MisManager Ted Benavides knew the real state of the city's finances) took his carnival act on the road with a Senate race. Hicks would have his favorite politician in D.C., and his good buddy Tom Dunning running City Hall just the way Kirk had things set up.

That old Devil Democracy got in the way of their plans. Laura Miller became the Mayor and has been shaking things up at City Hall ever since. May not have agreed with all of her decisions, but she has done a heck of a lot more right than wrong.

Tom Hicks should have taken Miller's victory as more than a bump in the road toward his riding roughshod over local elected officials.

Then there were (and still are) those rumors going around that all is not well at Hicks, Muse. Then Hicks put his very good soccer team on the market. Then there was the very public fight last year over doing another tax abatement for Victory via that California/NY gang f/k/a Palladium. Then American Airlines started poor mouthing and talking to Bankruptcy lawyers. Then John Cornyn sent Ron Kirk back to practicing law (or whatever he does for that firm).

There's a lot more "thens", but you get the picture that Robber Baron Hicks is not a happy Buccaneer these days.

He's getting ridiculed by baseball executives:

Hicks tears into league official;
Official says Hicks has made bad investments
02/23/2003 By SEAN HORGAN / The Dallas Morning News

. . .Major League Baseball executive Sandy Alderson . . .told a conference on baseball economics Friday in Nashville, Tenn., that Hicks had made "lousy investments in telecommunications" and that Hicks' investments have "suffered dramatically" in the declining stock market.
"I can tell you that Tom Hicks is probably a lot more conservative than when he signed Alex Rodriguez," Alderson was quoted as saying.
. . . It is almost unheard of for Major League Baseball executives to comment on an individual owner's non-baseball investments or businesses unless they involve illegalities or types of businesses frowned upon by the commissioner's office. . . .

Tom Hicks and Mayor PreTend Poss and That Former Mayor Ron Kirk frown on free speech and uppity commoners. Remember when Poss and Kirk tried to shutdown Dallas.org, BarkingDogs.org and DallasArena.com?

Allen Gwinn, Avi Adelman and I could not have bought the kind of publicity that stupid bureaucratic and autocratic move did for our web sites. It was a lot of fun watching them squirm out of that mess.

Hicks may not like what Alderson had to say, but it certainly wasn't libel. Besides, a whole bunch of people without Alderson's clout are saying the same thing.

MLB, Hicks try to make amends; Rangers owner says he's received apology over Alderson's remarks
02/24/2003 By SEAN HORGAN / The Dallas Morning News

. . . Major League Baseball tried to mollify Rangers owner Tom Hicks, who was openly furious at what he considered criticism of his non-baseball investments . . ..
Hicks said . . . "Springtime is supposed to be for getting excited about baseball. The last thing I want to do is spend it talking about Sandy Alderson."
. . . Speaking Friday at an academic conference in Nashville, Tenn. on the economics of baseball, Alderson was quoted saying, "I can tell you Tom Hicks is probably a lot more conservative than when he signed Alex Rodriguez."
Hicks fired back Saturday night, saying Alderson's comments were not only inappropriate but also factually incorrect because those investments were not made by the Rangers owner individually, but by the Dallas-based Hicks Muse Tate & Furst investment firm of which he is chairman of the board.
. . . Hicks, Rangers president Michael Cramer and general manager John Hart pointed out that Alderson criticized the team for signing Alex Rodriguez to his 10-year, $252 million contract and also fined the team $450,000 for tampering by hiring Hart and Grady Fuson.
. . . Alderson told reporters Sunday . . . his comments were not meant as a criticism, but as an example of outside forces affecting the decision-making process in baseball.
. . . Alderson also called Cramer to explain his remarks. But in the conversation with reporters, he never used the words "apologize" or "mistake."
. . . Hicks said. "I thought it was important to receive his apology and important for him to admit that it's improper to talk about any owner like he did."

Sounds like Tommy took Alderson's explanation as an apology, when Alderson never made one. Why should the guy apologize for stating a fact? Hicks can't even unload the Stars, when Ross Perot, Jr. made a killing when he sold the Mavericks to Mark Cuban.

Hicks is getting nowhere with his Victory Project.

Leases are blow to Victory; Hicks Muse, other tenants renew space at Crescent
02/27/2003 By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News

Four major tenants ? including investment firm Hicks Muse Tate & Furst Inc. ? have renewed leases at the Crescent office complex . . .   make it unlikely that the proposed Victory Tower or other office buildings will be built on the north side of downtown, some leasing agents say.
. . . "Most of these new leases were for 10 years with renewal options," said John Zogg, senior vice president of Crescent Real Estate Equities.
. . . "Hicks Muse and Weil, Gotshal & Manges were supposed to be anchor tenants for the Victory office tower, which was announced almost three years ago by Dallas businessman Tom Hicks. . . . part of the $600 million Victory mixed-use development to be built next to the American Airlines Center sports arena.
. . . with the office component on the shelf and delays in signing retail leases, the timing of the entire Victory project is in question.
    Mr. Hicks blamed Dallas city officials Wednesday for countless delays that kept Victory from getting started. . . ".   "I'm unhappy for the city that the project hasn't gotten off the ground," Mr. Hicks said.
. . . Given the current economy and the oversupply of office space in Dallas, leasing agents say, it's not practical to develop a new office tower. . . .veteran downtown leasing agent Joel Pustmueller. "Right now renewing is the better economic decision, not building."
. . . Mr. Zogg agrees. . . . "At the end of the day, Hicks Muse tried to re-create the Crescent environment [in planning the Victory Tower], and it did not make economic sense," . . . .
   Victory Tower would have cost about $100 million and was to be built across from American Airlines Center.
   It was part of the Victory project of retail buildings, apartments and a hotel to be developed by New York-based Urban Related Development Corp., formerly known as Palladium Co. . . . Under terms of its agreement with the city of Dallas, the first phase of the Victory project must be completed by the end of 2005 to get $43 million in public sector incentives.

One councilman defends his pro-Palladium vote as saying they don't get one penny of the $43 million if they don't do the project. That's only part of the tragedy and travesty of that Palladium tax abatement. Granting that $43 million to Palladium killed the redevelopment of the Mercantile Bank complex Downtown. No one with any sense is going to invest in restoring that bank building when it would be competing with a new, tax-free project with high visibility from three freeways.

Ross, Jr. always said his purchase of the Mavericks was a real estate deal. They picked the most unlikely piece of real estate in Dallas to plop down a sports arena. Not because it would be good for sports or good for Dallas or even Downtown. They picked that site because of its access from Stemmons, Woodall Rogers and Central.

The arena should have been built in the Farmers Market area or the Cedars or even just inside Oak Cliff near Reunion's garage. It would have been the economic stimulator and stabilizer any of those areas desperately need. The Oak Lawn/Turtle Creek Blvd. location of the arena was a land grab -- nothing more.

A couple of Robber Barons and their hired hands at City Hall ripped this city off like no one has ever done before. Why do you think we are in our current mess?

Ross, Jr. may have gotten away with his thieving ways by cashing out early, but Tom Hicks is no longer the town's golden boy.