A look at the low-profile, big-money, and well-connected group of people calling the shots on the NM United stadium deal.
Peter Trevisani didn’t know a thing about soccer. Not until 1998, when he walked into a London pub to catch a match. The rest, as they say, is history.
Trevisani, local soccer team owner and ABQ mini-celebrity, must have told that story a million times. It’s a good one, kind of rags-to-riches-esque with a “guy walks into a bar” set-up.
Trevisani has turned Albuquerque professional soccer on its head. The city exchanged a handful of middling teams for a multi-million-dollar operation that plays good soccer. New Mexico United has been a boon for the city and state. The team fits well in New Mexico.
But behind the façade, NM United is fueled by million-dollar deals, big-money investors, and a handful of real estate magnates. These are the people who stand to benefit the most from a new United stadium. The shadow players have been covertly calling the shots since the club’s inception, and they’ve always had one uniting rallying call: BUILD THE STADIUM.
These shadow players are the other owners of NM United. While Trevisani has cultivated a strong public image, the rest of the ownership group remains below the radar. They wear many hats. There’s a wall street guy, a car dealership owner, and two titans of local real estate development. They’re all men, and they all have made waves with their money across the city. It’s unknown exactly how much these “owners” own of NM United. It’s also difficult to track down detailed information about their dealings, but here’s a short overview.
Ian McKinnon. An Albuquerque Academy alum, McKinnon made his millions (billions?) managing the personal wealth of the Ziff brothers, three heirs to a large family fortune. Dirk, Daniel, and Robert Ziff are among the 150 richest Americans because they decided to aggressively invest their inheritance, a hugely profitable scheme that McKinnon and others oversaw. McKinnon is the donor behind the University of New Mexico’s sparkling new business school building, the McKinnon Center for Management.
Ed Garcia. Garcia is the CEO of Garcia Automotive Group, which operates Garcia Honda and Garcia Infiniti. The Garcia family owns 13 car dealerships in Albuquerque and the southwest. Garcia is the proud owner of a new downtown commercial development. He is also the in-kind contributor of $15,000 worth of rent-free office space to Mayor Tim Keller’s re-election campaign.
Jason Harrington. Harrington is the CEO of HB Construction, one of the largest construction firms in Albuquerque and New Mexico. HB Construction has at least two new construction projects coming up downtown. Harrington’s foray into campaign contributions includes donations to oil and gas powerhouse Steve Pearce, Trump Insurrection-denier Yvette Herrell, twice-failed CD-1 candidate Janice Arnold Jones, and current Mayor Tim Keller.
Ben Spencer. A big name, Spencer is CEO of one of the largest real estate companies in the southwest: Titan Development. He cashed in on Albuquerque shopping mall development in the early 2000s and has been in the development game ever since. Spencer is a Trump supporter who has donated over $25,000 to New Mexico republicans and is the single largest individual donor to the tough-on-crime mayoral candidate Sheriff Manuel Gonzales III. (He gave $10,000 in June).
Trevisani himself has a legacy in New Mexico. He previously worked at Thornburg Investment Management, a behemoth investment management firm located in the hills of Santa Fe. Founded by Garrett Thornburg in 1982, the company was (and is) a quirky part of the state. Wall Streeters flocked from the east coast to New Mexico in the 90s and early 2000s. They made a killing.
For all their differences, Trevisani and the ownership group share one key feature: access to massive wealth. Some think this is a blessing. “New Mexicans investing in New Mexico,” is the way one senior City official described it recently.
The issue is stadiums are not good investments, not for the city and not for everyday people.
Publicly backed stadium-building is a racket. The costs almost never outweigh the benefits. That’s because after a short-term construction period, the jobs created are seasonal and low-paying. Stadiums have a low ‘multiplier’ effect, meaning their net impact is much lower than jobs created by a technology or manufacturing employer.
The public cost remains higher even if the initial investment is paid back. That’s because the city loses the ability to pay for infrastructure projects now. Research has found that stadium deals lead to a negative net community impact, because the government is putting money toward projects it could otherwise use for infrastructure projects.
Trevisani recent messaging highlights that the city’s “investment” will be repaid over time through the team’s rent payments. This is the oldest finance trick in the book. An investment can only be profitable if it’s the best use of money available to the investor. Just because a stadium will pay back the money does not make it a smart investment. Stadiums have a much lower return on investment than streets, housing, or other things the city can spend bond money on. Those are the things that drive city revenues, not a massive concrete box used 20 nights out of the year.
No matter how you spin it a $50 million loan for a stadium is a handout to NM United, one that won’t produce benefits for the community. And yet, Trevisani and his crew of real estate tycoon team owners want you to believe a stadium is “just going to be good. It can’t be bad.”
The connections between US lower division soccer and real estate development are remarkable. Take the United Soccer League (USL), organizer of NM United’s USL Championship league. In 2009, the USL was purchased by NuRock Soccer Holdings, a subsidiary of NuRock Companies, one of the largest affordable housing developers in the country. The executives of NuRock’s soccer dealings are Robert Hoskins, a real estate magnate, and Alec Papadakis, head of the Papadakis family trust.
The pair reformed lower-division soccer in the US, aggressively expanding into mid-sized markets that did not have professional sports teams. Over this period, soccer stadiums began popping up across the country, most of which were publicly backed.
The Hoskins and Papadakis partnership show how soccer and real estate overlap in one particularly profitable way: stadium development. It’s a logical business strategy. After a well-orchestrated PowerPoint presentation, over-zealous, ballot-anxious city leaders promise city funds to build a stadium. Once built, that stadium means more team money. More team money means league executives can raise franchise fees and grow their profits even more. Bigger profits mean more, better-orchestrated PowerPoints. The cycle continues. Communities across the country continue to pay the price.
Justin Papadakis, COO, Chief Real Estate Officer of USL and son of USL co-owner Alec Papadakis, recently admitted that this stadium effort was a “key strategic priority.” He said the USL has plans to be the largest stadium-builder in the world with plans for 30 stadiums in the next five years.
What’s happening in Albuquerque is part of Papadakis’s playbook. The projected cost of the Albuquerque stadium would make it the most expensive USL stadium in the country. The proposed $50 million bond-funded stadium handout is also the biggest given to a lower-division soccer team.
Papadakis and crew must be salivating at the prospect of a November 2 victory (which, in all likelihood, they will get).
When textbooks are written about the 2020s, historians will no doubt call this the New Gilded Age. Just months ago, the richest men in the country literally blasted themselves into space because they could while the rest of us dealt with a deadly virus surge, crippling wildfires, and unprecedented flooding.
We have been told that the rich will ‘reinvest’ their way to solutions. That we should be grateful for the ‘hope’ that people like Trevisani and the NM United group bring to Albuquerque. I don’t buy that message, just like I didn’t applaud Bezos and Branson upon their Earthly return.
This type of policy doesn’t work. Trickle-down economics for the rich and stadium handouts are cut from the same cloth. The city can, and should, make infrastructure investments using bond money. But that capital should support services that promote community well-being, like homeless centers and affordable housing development, or expand needed infrastructure, like stormwater systems and city streets.
Papadakis, Trevisani, and the wealthy crew of NM United owners have been calling the shots on the stadium deal from the beginning. If they want to build a stadium, let them. They can find the money and make the investment themselves. The people of Albuquerque should not give them a handout.
Readers interested in opposing the stadium can sign up to volunteer and find other ways to get involved here.
