Taxpayers will be protected. The stadium will revitalize the Brown Square neighborhood. Attendance will be strong. Other groups will clamor to use it.

The number of false, broken, and partly-realized promises attached to the Rhinos' soccer stadium is staggering.

Why didn't anyone see this coming, you say? Actually, they did. City officials rejected the team owners' business plan for the stadium because it did not contain enough private funding, says a recently released audit by the state comptroller's office. And the Greater Rochester Sports Authority, which was supposed to oversee the stadium, also begged off.

"We looked at what was proposed and concluded that it just wasn't viable," says Tom Frey, former authority board member. "Nobody was interested in getting into such a project, and we decided not to do it."

Undeterred, team owners went to state lawmakers and got their money: a $15 million grant to build the stadium was included in the 2000-01 state budget. Legislators approved the money, the audit says, without vetting the project to determine its viability. There was no up-to-date business plan, even though designs for the stadium had been drastically downsized. And no one made sure the team's owners had the financial wherewithal to pull it off.

So despite promises to the contrary, taxpayers are holding the bag for PaeTec Park-cum-Marina Auto Stadium. Now owned by the city, the stadium required a $420,000 subsidy last year, and city corporation counsel Tom Richards says to expect subsidies for the indeterminate future.

"We're trying, and so is the team, to their credit, to get this down to as low a level as we can," he says. "But I'm not in a position to sit here and tell you it's going to go away right away."

We've been here before, of course, with the fast ferry and Frontier Field. And every time taxpayers have to rescue a project, it ratchets up the cynicism and lends credence to the poisonous perspective that Rochester can't do big projects.

Richards, however, says that while questions about the soccer stadium's origins are valid, you can't judge a project's value by strictly economic standards. If you did, he says, many good projects would never get done.

The City of Rochester took possession of the soccer stadium prior to the Rhinos' 2008 season, after the original owners failed to pay the bank and stadium contractors. They also defaulted on their lease.

The Rhinos had been in the new stadium for more than a year, and the choices were to either let the team and the stadium go, or to step in.

"What is the better situation?" Richards says.

The fact that team owners had trouble raising money to build the stadium should have set off alarms, Richards says. One of the measures of a project's credibility, he says, is how much the backers are able to raise on their own.

That was the past, though, Richards says. The question facing the city in 2008 was what happens if the stadium is abandoned?

"It always was intended to be somewhat of a community asset," Richards says. "You've got potentially a really serious impact on the neighborhood" if it becomes an empty stadium.

If you build something in the city and it fails, he says, there's a tremendous amount of pressure on City Hall to get involved.

Richards and Frey agree that government should make sure, as best as it can, that projects are viable before investing public money. The audit is pretty clear that state legislators didn't do that in the case of the soccer stadium.

Boiled down to its bones, the report says that while no money was misspent, no one took responsibility to oversee the project in its entirety. And no one checked the numbers to make sure the team's owners could make it happen and keep it going.

"If people were told that the soccer stadium would need $150,000 a year, there are people in the community who would've said that's a good idea," Richards says. "What is a mistake is to say, 'Don't worry about it.' And have that turn out not to be the case."

Government invests in things often considered too risky for private enterprise, he says. Officials do this, he says, because they believe the investments are in the community's long-term interest.

"A lot of things that government does, you wouldn't be able to justify on strict economic analysis," Richards says. "A park doesn't typically generate much revenue, but it enhances the quality of life. So when you make the judgment, you have to make it in those terms."

Backers often pitch the nebulous phrase "economic development" to justify their projects. Richards agrees that it's not easy to quantify in the strictest terms, but there are things you can measure, such as how many jobs will be created and the tax revenue that will be raised.

Are there lessons to take from the stadium narrative? Richards and Frey say yes. Take the former Medley Centre in Irondequoit and the Rochester Broadway Theatre League's plans for a new theater, downtown or in the suburbs.

Developer Scott Congel was granted property tax breaks for a planned $260-million project in Irondequoit that includes a hotel, apartments, and retail. And RBTL will almost certainly need public money to build its theater.

The responsibility of government, Frey says, is to make sure projects are put through their paces before they get public funding.

"There's no reason why it shouldn't be vetted as thoroughly as any private business project," he says. "Get a business plan, see where the money's coming from, try to judge how valid the sources are."

Richards says that if RBTL chooses the Midtown site - one of three possible locations - city officials will want a budget detailing funding sources for the theater, including how much RBTL can raise privately.

The estimate to build a city theater is $70 million. But it's the operating cost, Richards says, that is the real concern.

"In the private sector, nobody would build anything if they knew how much it costs to operate," he says. "If you raise the money to build it and you haven't solved the operating cost problem, you're in trouble."