Mish – 14-year Commercial Real Estate Supply In China:
“The scale of development was unprecedented anywhere in the world,” said Rodman, a Los Angeles native who lives in Beijing, running a firm called Global Distressed Solutions. “It defied logic. It just doesn’t make sense.”
The government spent $43 billion for the Olympics, nearly three times as much as any other host city. But many of the venues proved too big, too expensive and more photogenic than practical.
The National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, has only one event scheduled for this year: a performance of the opera “Turandot” on Aug. 8, the one-year anniversary of the Olympic opening ceremony. China’s leading soccer club backed out of a deal to play there, saying it would be an embarrassment to use a 91,000-seat stadium for games that ordinarily attract only 10,000 spectators.
The venue, which costs $9 million a year to maintain, is expected to be turned into a shopping mall in several years, its owners announced last month. A baseball stadium that opened last spring with an exhibition game between the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, is being demolished. Its owner says it also will use the land for a shopping mall.
I’d laugh, but government-backed construction in U.S. has done plenty of similarly stupid things. Even here in Tennessee Knoxville’s Convention Center often sits empty and Memphis’s pyramid-shaped basketball arena may be turned into a retail complex or a church.
RSS Posts Feed
