BRADENTON, Fla. - Two Major League Baseball teams seeking a new spring training stadium on Florida's southeast coast must renegotiate their proposal for public financing.
Palm Beach County commissioners, in a 4-3 vote Tuesday, rejected the plan forwarded by the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros for the construction of a new $140 million stadium.
Commissioners left the door open for a counterproposal.
At issue is the plan's reliance on gap financing from the county's tourist development bed tax.
"I don't think that the four votes were against the project," said commissioner Mary Lou Berger, adding that she thought the vote was against the gap financing. "I would like everyone to sharpen their pencils."
The plan forwarded by the Nationals and Astros is dependent on several funding sources, including revenues from two portions of an economically sensitive local tourist development bed tax.
The teams want to finance the facility with 30-year taxable bonds. Their proposal called for the bonds to be secured with $48 million in base funding from a half-cent county bed tax, $38 million from annual rent paid by the teams, $31 million from a state sales tax rebate, and another $24 million to provide gap funding by escalating the amount of tourist tax funds by 3.1% annually.
While county staff supported the base bed tax contribution, as did commissioners, they said that the escalating amount for the gap funding would be "speculative and could require drawing funds from other allocations to make up for any shortfall of revenues" for other projects.
Staff initially said that a review of tourist development tax-related projects already planned by the county indicated that there could be a deficit up to $67.1 million over nine years if the gap funding was approved.
Later, after explaining that the projected deficit had been calculated incorrectly, staff told commissioners that the stadium funding would still have a negative - but significantly less - impact of $13.9 million over six years.
Commissioners, through consensus following the vote, asked the teams and county staff to find another way for the financing plan to work.
"This board wants baseball," said County Mayor Priscilla Taylor, who voted to support the original plan. "We want to see if you can get to the numbers if a different manner."
Astros owner Jim Crane said he was disheartened that commissioners believed the teams were "running away with a lot of money because we're not." He said they are putting more of their own money into the project than some other teams have contributed.
Crane, who said the Astros have been searching three years to replace their Kissimmee spring training site, also stressed that MLB teams don't move very often from one spring training location to another.
"We want to be here," he said, agreeing to take another look at the financing numbers.
Palm Beach commissioners said they would schedule the funding plan for another discussion on Oct. 21.
Earlier in the meeting, Astros general counsel Giles Kibbe told commissioners that the teams' plan would reinvigorate baseball on the east coast of the state.
The teams want to abandon spring training sites more than 120 miles to the north.
If the plan succeeds, Palm Beach County would have an unprecedented four MLB teams playing in two facilities.
The St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins already play pre-season games in the county-owned Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter. The Astros and Nationals would have the second shared Florida spring training facility.
"This will be the premier destination for spring training baseball," Kibbe said.
Missing from the discussion on Tuesday was the location of the new ballpark.
The Nationals and Astros are currently banking on a 160-acre parcel owned by the city of West Palm Beach, which is the county seat.
County officials had asked the city to donate the acreage for the ballpark. In return, the city offered to swap it for 1.7 acres of county-owned land in the city's downtown. The county rejected the swap.
The city is "not involved in negotiations to build a baseball complex," West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio said in a newsletter released after Tuesday's county commission meeting. She also said that "not one single city dollar would be spent to build a stadium."
Muoio recognized that the baseball teams view the city land as their number one choice for the new ballpark, but she said that it required the city to donate the land for free.
"Our 160-acre property located near Military Trail and 45th Street is a valuable city asset and something I have refused to simply give away without significant compensation," the mayor wrote. "Donating the land would remove it from the tax rolls since the county - not the teams - would own the land."
Muoio said the city last Friday received an unsolicited offer from a private developer to buy the 160 acres for $14 million to build a mixed-use project. The project includes a 39-acre public park, she said, adding that the city will give the offer "serious consideration."
If the city accepts the developer's proposal, baseball proponents can still focus on land in Palm Beach County, Muoio said.
There has been discussion of putting the new stadium on a smaller park site in Lake Worth, though it is not the prime spot sought by the Astros and Nationals.
Fifteen of MLB's 30 teams play spring training games in the Sunshine state's Grapefruit League, most of them in bond-financed facilities backed by leveraged local tourist bed taxes and state sales tax rebates.
The other 15 teams play pre-season warm-up games in Arizona, many in recently bond-financed stadiums.
Spring training in Florida is in decline, the Astros' Kibbe told county commissioners Tuesday. In 2002, 19 teams played in the state. Since then, four teams have moved to Arizona.
Failure to negotiate a deal with the Astros and Nationals could result in Palm Beach County losing the Cardinals and Marlins to facilities closer to other teams elsewhere in the state, Kibbe said.
Having a second shared stadium with the Nationals and Astros in Palm Beach County is an opportunity to "create a hub of activity" where MLB teams can travel short distances within Florida to play each other.
"We believe this will reinvigorate baseball on the east coast of Florida," said Kibbe. "This is about saving spring training in Florida."
