Minor League Baseball President on stadium referendum: ‘Save your money’

Potomac Nationals Stadium coverage

The president of Minor Leauge Baseball today showed his frustration at the lack of urgency to build the Potomac Nationals a new stadium.

The A-Advanced team since 1984 has played at Pfitzner Stadium in Woodbridge, a place that MiLB President Pat O’Conner says is not up to the league’s player development and fan standards. He flew to Virginia from St. Petersburg, Fla. to speak to the Prince William County Board of Supervisors who are scheduled to vote on whether or not to send to referendum a proposal to backstop a $35 million stadium funding deal.

“If you do vote for the referendum, save your money and don’t call for the question,” O’Conner told the board.

Potomac Nationals Team Owner Art Silber has agreed to fund construction of a new 6,000 capacity, 4,200-seat stadium, to give ownership of the ballpark to the county, and let the county government use the stadium 183 days a year, in exchange for the county issuing bonds to fund the project.

If all goes to plan, the team pays back the bonds over 30 years in a $2.3 million annual payment, as well as a $450,000 land lease for the stadium property, with a 10% lease escalation clause every five years. If something goes awry, taxpayers would be on the hook for the debt.

Sending the stadium deal to a November referendum would kill the deal, according to Silber, who said it won’t give him enough time to give Minor Leauge Baseball notice of his plans to vacate Pfitzner Stadium — something he said the Leauge requires the team to do by 2018 — or find a buyer for the team if voters don’t support the deal.

“I’m not confident in referendums,” O’Conner told supervisors. “In this day and age, referendums are not favorable, and they’re filled with misinformation.”

Gainesville District Supervisor Peter Candland has pushed for the vote. Today, he held up a financial statement from the team which O’Conner did not dispute.

“The Potomac Nationals show $9,500 [a year] in income over the last five years, after expenses. And that’s without a $2.3 million [stadium] lease,” said Candland.

O’Conner said the deal put forward by the Silber’s “unusual,” and noted that most Minor Leauge Ballparks are 70% funded by the host jurisdiction. Prince William County’s growing marketplace would not only support the team but build it, he added.

“If you take the eight to 10 metrics that we use to compare markets — average household income, average median income, age, the level of education and affluence — there is no market that we evaluated across the board is better,” said O’Conner.

Supervisors today asked O’Conner for a legally-binding document that would force the league to pay for the stadium should the team default, or move to another locality. While he offered no written document, he verbally assured officials the team, except in the case of an unforeseen catastrophe, has no reason to leave the affluent area.

None of the 160 Minor Leauge Baseball teams across the U.S. have legal assurances with their respective cities.

“We don’t jump towns, and we don’t abandon partners,” said O’Conner. “The relationship is local, and the risk and reward are here.”

The minors president told county officials the league’s stadium standards were developed in the early 1990s when revenues for the league nationwide were $260 million. Today, in part because the increased stadium criteria, revenue for Minor Leauge Baseball have skyrocketed to over $1 billion annually.

Roger Snyder, a Prince William County resident who served as county’s land use planner during the 1980s, urged supervisors to send the plan to referendum. He called the deadline to move out of the team’s current home a “self-imposed, self-inflicted wound.”

“Send it to a referendum. I think it will pass,” he added.

Also at the meeting today. JBC Companies spokesman Tom Sebastian said the development firm which owns the land between Wegmans grocery store and Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center on which the proposed stadium would sit, would pay a portion of the costs for roadway improvements at the stadium site.

An independent study commissioned by the county identified seven projects costing $9.35 million to complete. If the county puts up $5 million, and up to $275,000 for the right of way acquisition cost to take land from the hospital for the addition of a new lane on Opitz Boulevard outside the stadium, JBG will cover the remaining $4.3 million.

The Board of Supervisors is set to take up the referendum vote matter at 7:30 p.m. Multiple team supporters are expected to speak during the meeting.