A flurry of big numbers has obscured stadium discussions since the news broke in February that the Titans and Metro were moving toward a new build.
As both parties looked past renovation options, the number has ticked up from $293 million, the 2017 estimated cost of a renovated Nissan Stadium, to $600 million earlier this year. The stadium landed in the Capital Improvements Budget (CIB) on Friday at $2 billion. After some confusion at this week’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting, Council Director Margaret Darby indicated that the city had made a $200 million "clerical error" and expects a $2.2 billion dollar price tag, making the Titans’ proposed new home the second-most-expensive stadium in the world.
Most of these conversations have happened without clarity about what Metro owes under its current lease. This number represents the city’s minimum obligation to the Titans, the number against which new stadium costs could be compared and evaluated. After prompting from Metro Sports Authority board member Dan Hogan, the Titans will name their interpretation of the city’s obligations at Thursday’s MSA meeting.
The CIB — released by Mayor John Cooper on May 13, corrected on May 14, and currently awaiting an additional correction — budgets another $800 million to redevelop the industrial floodplain between the Cumberland and I-24, pushing total stadium district costs above $3 billion. Infrastructure upgrades will cost $500 million, a redesigned street grid will run up another $138 million, East Bank “neighborhood mobility investments” tally $85 million, and two new bridges will total $122 million. One of these, a proposed $100 million bridge into Napier, was not included in the CIB but showed up a few weeks ago in a federal grant application. All of these projects fall under the mayor’s newly created public works and transportation arm, the Nashville Department of Transportation and Multimodal Infrastructure (NDOT). The scale and scope of these commitments, if approved, will reorient NDOT around the East Bank for the next four years. In a normal year, any one of these projects would be an eye-popping line item.
Estimations have largely ignored infrastructure costs, though East Bank upgrades are logistically and financially necessary to a new stadium. The stadium deal backs the city’s debt with East Bank sales taxes instead of the city’s general fund, betting on an unbuilt commercial district bustling enough to service hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.
Cooper braced Nashville for impact last week with an op-ed for The Tennessean, effectively a press release the day before the budget came out. The Titans deal hinges on shifting the tax burden from the general fund onto two revenue streams: a 1 percent hospitality tax hike and dedicated sales tax revenue from the area surrounding the stadium, which funnels half of state sales taxes to pay stadium debt. The funding plan requires Nashville to put nearly a billion in the ground to build a commercial district capable of supporting its stadium debt. Right now, the district is mostly parking lots and industrial sites.
The Nissan Stadium Assessment, done in 2017, was Metro’s last evaluation of the Titans' current home. (See a PDF of the full assessment via the embed at right.) The majority of recommended updates focused on new camera broadcasting infrastructure, food and drink facilities, elevators, and the stadium’s fleet of scoreboards. Titans CEO Burke Nihill has specifically mentioned concerns about the now-23-year-old stadium's concrete infrastructure, sometimes implying the structure is crumbling or beyond repair. Of $293 million in total upgrades, repairs for the stadium’s concrete frame were just less than $33 million for minor spalling (cracking), cleaning and waterproofing through 2037. The 2017 assessment has not been a part of public stadium conversations in the past six months. The Titans have dismissed those numbers and findings as obsolete, and will offer updated figures on Thursday.
Both the city and team quickly abandoned the renovation option, which Nihill characterized as prohibitively expensive in front of the Metro Sports Authority in April. As reported by our sister publication the Nashville Post, the Titans have already selected Kansas City firm Manica Architecture for the stadium's initial concept designs. The current Nissan lease keeps Metro on the hook for maintaining a first-class stadium, a legally ambiguous term hovering over stadium discussions that the Titans could use to hold the city liable for more than a billion dollars in repairs. The Titans will share their interpretation Thursday in front of MSA’s finance committee.
Rather than argue over the past, both parties have embraced a vision for a domed stadium fit to host the Super Bowl or World Cup. The Titans, the city and the state have set up several mechanisms to split direct stadium costs between different funding sources. So far, new costs break down between the city and state. State lawmakers included a $500 million direct subsidy in this year’s state budget, a nice chunk of money that drew some fire from rural representatives whose tax dollars will get vacuumed into Nashville’s tourism-industrial complex. The Titans have hinted at a contribution of around $700 million, soft numbers referenced in radio interviews.
“[We’re] still working through the numbers,” Nihill told 104.5 The Zone in April. “There's been a number floating around for people who have been doing math of $700 million. I’m not trying to break news by confirming that number, but I think it’s fair to be talking about a private investment in that range.”
Titans owners have agreed to nothing publicly, though things may be more solid behind closed doors. Former Cooper scheduler Ariel Hughes tweeted last week that the mayor meets with the Titans every Monday, and billionaire owner Amy Adams Strunk’s holding company appeared to be making moves based on paperwork filed with the SEC earlier this month. This leaves Metro with $1 billion in stadium costs (backed by hospitality and sales taxes) and $1 billion in infrastructure upgrades. As a few specifics emerge, the city faces a massive line item that will require years of attention, work, money and oversight. The stadium has only one real peer, cost-wise — Clean Water Nashville, a block-by-block replacement of outdated sewage and plumbing lines currently in its third decade after multiple extensions, project delays and an EPA consent decree.
Legislation still has to be carried through the Metro Council, where there might still be debate. Councilmembers roiled by the size of the project and lack of communication from the mayor’s office may demand due diligence before they accept the Titans’ invoice — similar to what Councilmember Courtney Johnston did this week with a request for the 88 Hermitage acquisition.
Discussions around a new Titans stadium have proceeded like many recent projects pushed by the mayor’s office, leaving councilmembers to vote with more questions than answers. Sports stadiums offer the public little economic benefit, rearranging existing revenue rather than attracting new spending, and redirecting commerce to teams' owners. The conversation has moved quickly in three months and could grind to a halt just as quickly, as skeptical councilmembers are already clamoring for more information.
Update: After this story was published, a spokesperson for Mayor Cooper provided the following statement: "These infrastructure investments would be happening whether or not we build a new stadium."
