DALLAS — Members of the Dallas City Council were enthusiastic last week about a plan to keep a college football game in its long-time home with stadium improvements financed by $25.5 million of certificates of obligation.
Mayor Mike Rawlings and officials of the State Fair of Texas said upgrades to the Cotton Bowl stadium in Fair Park would keep the football game between the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma at the facility through 2020.
The teams have played in Dallas every fall since 1929. The current contract expires after the 2015 contest.
“We cannot let that game go anywhere else,” Rawlings said at the council briefing April 4. The council will vote on the proposal at its Wednesday session.
Rawlings said the money spent on upgrading the stadium to keep the UT-OU game in Dallas is an investment that will retain an event that generates $500,000 in general fund revenue a year, and $30 million in economic activity.
“I think it pays for itself, frankly,” Rawlings said. “You’ve got my commitment as mayor to put together a first-class business and marketing plan that makes sure that this investment is leveraged to the next level.”
Chief financial officer Jeanne Chipperfield said the 10-year, non-callable notes would be sold competitively on June 6 if the sales ordinance is approved Wednesday.
Bracewell & Giuliani and West & Associates are co-bond counsel for the sale.
The financial advisory team includes First Southwest Co. and Estrada Hinojosa & Co.
The only council member with objections to the plan to issue the debt was Dwaine Caraway, who wanted more money for stadium upgrades.
“Realistically, $25 million is not enough,” Caraway said. “We’re patching it up again.”
Caraway called for Dallas to find creative ways to finance further work at the stadium and other historic structures at Fair Park.
Pete Schenkel, chairman of the State Fair of Texas’s sports committee, said he had “handshake agreements” with officials from both schools to extend the current contract.
UT and OU said in 2006 they would move the game from Dallas unless improvements were made to the stadium, Schenkel said.
The universities agreed to stay through 2015 when voters approved $35 million of general obligation bonds for the stadium effort in November 2006.
The 2006 bonds financed 80% of the planned upgrades, Schenkel said, and the requested $25.5 million would complete the program.
“The schools want to stay,” Schenkel said. “It’s ours to lose, but we have to finish what we’ve started.”
Dallas has $1.8 billion of outstanding GO debt rated AA-plus by Standard & Poor’s and Aa1 by Moody’s Investors Service.
