How much tourism revenue does 4.5 million visitors annually bring the city of Barcelona? What other famous national landmarks (likely Church-owned) in Spain can be retroactively fined for being constructed without a building permit?
However, this can be a legitimate issue. For example, New Haven, Connecticut, the site of Yale University, has become a notoriously crime-ridden area. It's not a very big place and something like half the property in the city is owned by non-profits (a few universities, a few large hospitals). Therefore the city's tax base is cut in half (US city revenues are largely from property taxes), but it still needs to provide infrastructure, police, public transportation, etc for everyone.
But it makes it seem more suspicious doing it like this instead of passing a new law that formalizes payments for services.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110907184503/http://www.yale.e...
The Yale endowment is a hair away from $30 billion dollars.
Their budget is $4 billion per year.
I don't feel good about tax benefits for organizations that big.
One of the major issues is that to complete Gaudi's original design, there should be gardens and accesses that are now occupied by buildings. Since the Sagrada Familia is not officially being built (because it has no permit), the city cannot officially study (if it can / how to) free that space.
Now they will be able to make these studies, and will have a proper justification if they end up deciding to expropriate some buildings to make space for these gardens/accesses. That's the real reason why the Sagrada Familia managers agreed to the payment...
Edit: Also, the Sagrada Familia is already exempt from paying property (not construction!) taxes because (a) it is owned by the church (religious temples don't pay property taxes in Spain); and (b) it is a good of public interest (that also don't pay taxes, like the Gaudi's designed Casa Batlló for instance). That is, "the leftists" could go after a much larger pie, and we must assume they don't because they somewhat agree with your reasoning.
I don't buy the argument about bringing in other tax revenue by association. "Everybody else" shouldn't be subsidizing infrastructure for the most attractive place in town just because it's the most attractive place... those people are probably working harder and taking more risks, they shouldn't have to foot the bill for the group profiting the most. (see also, sports stadiums)
If you don't charge for admissions then there is no way to moderate how many people visit the site, and you start to create a lot of problems just to deal with the massive influx of people.
> I don't buy the argument about bringing in other tax revenue by association. "Everybody else" shouldn't be subsidizing infrastructure for the most attractive place in town just because it's the most attractive place...
If you ever visit the Sagrada Familia you'll notice that the blocks surrounding the cathedral are packed with businesses living off the cathedral's popularity.
Even FC Barcelona and Nike have official stores right next to the front entrance.
It is rather obvious that the cathedral is a huge profit source for the city and a lot of companies, not counting the typical tourism and HORECA businesses. Insinuating that the Sagrada Familia is leechng off the poor government's goodwill is simply wrong and the exact opposite of the truth.
Just give out a fixed number of free tickets.
I don't have a problem at all with selling admission tickets, but maybe if you have millions of visitors a little bit of the money you get from them which you use to maintain your own premises and employees can also go to maintain the roads and police and schools just like everybody else.
Nonprofits can be great, but there gets to be a level with so much money that the value to society of not taxing seems lost.
That's your opinion, and one that is based on your personal assumption that no fee should be charged for admission.
> Just give out a fixed number of free tickets.
That's a effective way to generate a profitable ticket scalping network for criminal organizations. Is that your notion of a better outcome?
> I don't have a problem at all with selling admission tickets, but maybe if you have millions of visitors a little bit of the money you get from them which you use to maintain your own premises and employees can also go to maintain the roads and police and schools just like everybody else.
For some reason you've assumed that directly or indirectly absolutely zero money goes into those populist cliches.
No, it's not. “Nonprofit” isn't about not generating revenue, or even not generating surplus revenues (though IIRC, Sagrada Familia visitor fees fund construction, so it's not generating surplus revenues.)
Nonprofit is about not having people with a claim on profits.
SF's entrance fee is €30. There are at least 3 million visitors a year. Money is also collected from private donations.
The building and maintenance costs are €25m a year.
The rest goes... somewhere.
Considering that the city has to provide significant transport and other infrastructure support, this new deal is a bit of a bargain for the project.
It would be extremely interesting to read more about how this played out and why the basilica agreed to pay. Was there a lawsuit?
Typically a permit stipulates that a building should be finished within a certain time. It can probably be prolonged, but I think the project was in hiatus for a long time. Or a couple of times actually.
It's second time when Ada is taking money by force from the development. First: https://www.auraree.com/real-estate-news/colau-to-force-30-o... (has become a law few weeks ago)