In a complete reversal of his predecessor’s approach, Mayor Bill Purcell is rejecting the idea of using tax dollars, or tax diversionary dollars of any kind, to help build sports facilities.
In this case, the facility would have been a new stadium for Nashville’s minor league baseball team, the Nashville Sounds. Team officials have been asking Purcell and his finance director David Manning to consider diverting sales tax dollars collected at its Greer Stadium site to help pay for a new facility—the same method used to help fund Adelphia Coliseum and minor league ball parks in Memphis and Jackson, Tenn.
Manning has no enthusiasm for this idea, saying that building sports facilities with diverted sales tax dollars is flawed. “There is little evidence that, when it comes to the entire county, that stadiums contribute to growth in the sales tax,” he says. “They certainly contribute to the vitality of downtown and to the quality of life, but there is very little evidence that sales taxes go up as a result of stadiums and sports teams.”
The mayor’s stance on a new minor league baseball stadium may send the Sounds looking to one of Nashville’s suburbs, such as Hendersonville in Sumner County or Brentwood in Williamson County, for a new home. It also illustrates the differences between Purcell and his predecessor. Phil Bredesen used tax dollars to help pay for an NHL arena and an NFL stadium, arguing each time that such facilities help pay for themselves with the commerce that they indirectly generate.
Manning disagrees. “If you look at sales taxes in Davidson County since the mid-1990s, they have gone down,” he says. “That’s not to say that the Titans and Predators have caused a decrease in the sales taxes. But there is no evidence that they have increased them.”
The Sounds have been playing in Greer Stadium since 1978. Attendance slumped as the stadium aged, then sagged with the emergence of competing sports teams such as the Titans, Predators, and Kats, the arena football team. Three years ago, longtime Sounds owner Larry Schmittou sold the team to a partnership led by Chicago businessman Al Gordon. Since then, Gordon has been trying to get support for a new facility.
Compared to the arrival of a major league sports team, it’s hard to get as excited about a minor league team already here. That may explain why the Sounds franchise has failed to generate excitement for a new stadium. But the team also chose a strange way to get the mayor’s attention. Earlier this year, Sounds officials announced that they did not intend to pay their $170,000 rent on Greer Stadium. (Team officials say they spent $500,000 last year on maintenance costs, $200,000 for utilities, and $75,000 for other improvements.) “Given the high costs of operating the facility and the high maintenance costs, we have asked the mayor to take a look at that fourth component,” says Sounds chief financial officer Glenn Yaeger.
By putting the mayor in a position where it looks like he’s backing down if he helps them, the Sounds made a major political blunder. Nevertheless, the team offers some interesting arguments in favor of a new stadium. A minor league ball park costs in the $50 million range (depending on location)—a fraction of the $145 million Gaylord Entertainment Center (a number that even those involved with its construction say is probably understated) and the $200 million stadium. A sales tax diversion (which uses mostly state dollars) would cover most of the cost of the stadium bonds—unlike Adelphia Coliseum, whose bonds are supported by sales tax diversions, hotel-motel taxes, and a tax on water bills.
Sounds officials point out that tickets sell for between $6 and $10, making them considerably more affordable for a working family than Titans or Predators tickets. Since there are far more baseball games than there are football games, the Sounds could actually have a much larger impact on restaurants (especially if the stadium were downtown) than the Titans.
A new stadium would also hike attendance. Memphis recently built a new stadium for its minor league team (which upgraded from AA to AAA in the process). Now the Memphis Flyers bring in almost a million fans a year—three times the Sounds’ attendance and more fans than the Titans could possibly draw for its 10 annual home games.
Yaeger says he would love to duplicate what happened in Memphis. He says Greer Stadium’s capacity (about 10,000 seats) is not the problem, but other aspects of the park are. “We are deficient in everything from concessions to rest rooms to parking to lighting to training facilities,” he says. “I attended the league meeting last week, and one of the first things on the agenda was the inadequacy of the Nashville facility.”
Manning, however, is adamant about not building a stadium with government money. In a letter to the Sounds last week, he gave no hint of acquiescing on the Sounds rent issue. And the notion of the team moving out of Davidson County doesn’t make him flinch. “There have been many situations in which minor league ball clubs are better off in suburban than urban communities,” he says.
“We want to keep the Sounds here, but we think that this city has absorbed about as many major sports facilities as it can absorb for the foreseeable future.”
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