Ballpark financing not set as deadline approaches
The Nashville Sounds may need a cheering section at the site of their future downtown ballpark earlier than expected.
The team has yet to finalize a $23 million loan it needs to help finance the project, financing which must happen before the Metro Council votes on the leasing of land to the Sounds at its Dec. 19 meeting.
Council members must vote to accept a final version of the Metro lease of land to the Sounds, an approval required by the Sounds-Metro baseball agreement passed in February. And the team must secure approval from among four Metro agencies of the final design of its stadium and a final version of the master plan for the entire ballpark site — a plan delineating final placement of residential, office and retail buildings that Baltimore developer Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse will develop in concert with the Sounds — as well as placement of required greenway and roadways. However, final plans for any of this have yet to be submitted to Metro.
Struever, for its part, has yet to secure a necessary $20 million tax increment financing (TIF) loan, money it will feed to the Sounds for construction of the $43 million stadium. Future property tax revenues the stadium is expected to generate would secure the loan. The board of the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA) must approve the loan mechanism before the Metro Council takes its Dec. 19 Sounds vote, and the loan itself must close by year’s end.
Struever’s development director in Nashville, Michael Hayes said he is confident the TIF dollars will be secured.
“Our underwriters and financial advisors have informed us that the developments we have proposed to MDHA will be attractive to potential investors when they are taken to market,” he said.
Hayes also said Struever has found a loan underwriter — Morgan Keegan, an affiliate of Regions Bank — and has tapped financial adviser Municap, of Ellicott City, Md., to help structure the loan.
Meanwhile, Sounds General Manager Glenn Yaeger admitted the baseball team has yet to secure its own $23 million loan despite the looming deadline. He said because of mergers and acquisitions, there have been some changes to the banking consortium — led by First Tennessee — that promised the loan last year, but he said the Sounds have been meeting on a regular basis with the consortium and that he is confident the loan, along with final designs for the stadium, will be finalized in time.
Meanwhile, the four Metro agencies that must approve the various aspects of the project are waiting.
Before the Metro Council vote on Dec. 19, the city’s Industrial Development Board approve the Sounds’ $23 million financing commitment from the bank consortium and must approve the design and specifications of the ballpark. The Metro Sports Authority must approve a construction timeframe and construction budget.
Metro Planning Department staff must approve the site mater plan. And the staff of MDHA must, too, approve the master plan, the stadium design and Struever’s TIF loan.
In interviews Friday, Hayes and MDHA Executive Director Phil Ryan confirmed those approvals.
Asked about the status of the TIF loan and of the master plan, Ryan said that they are “certainly not finalized yet — I know they’re working on it; I know that time is short.”
If either the Sounds or Struever do not meet the timeline established in the February agreement the deal will become void unless Metro and the other parties agree to extend it, according to Ryan.
The filing deadline is Dec. 12 for legislation to be considered at the Dec. 19 council meeting.
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Pacific Coast League news 11/06
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