Diamondbacks franchise owners have been looking for a stadium upgrade for years.
The owner of Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks franchise, Ken Kendrick, is about to get around a half billion dollars to renovate the municipally owned Diamondbacks’ ballpark. There was the usual platitude from the sports organization about how great it is that the public is putting up money for a private business’ workstation. “This will be a monumental victory for baseball and Diamondbacks fans when signed by Governor Katie Hobbs,” The Diamondbacks franchise president and CEO Derrick Hall said in a statement. “We could then shift our focus to a proper lease extension negotiation with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in hopes of modernizing and renovating this public asset to a level those fans deserve.”
About that half billion dollars. It will come from a tax base. The state of Arizona is doing something called the recapturing of sales tax on items sold at the Phoenix stadium and reinvesting it into the stadium renovation. That will happen over a 30-year period. Money will also come from the sales tax of business in a designated area around the stadium. That money probably could be used else in Phoenix but it is going into an entertainment venue. Diamondbacks ownership has been looking to fix what it thought was a bad stadium situation in Phoenix for a number of years. In 2019, Arizona Diamondbacks’ ownership listened to a Henderson, Nevada pitch to build a ballpark for the Major League Baseball franchise. Diamondbacks ownership was looking for a new or renovated Phoenix stadium and needed to interject some urgency among Phoenix area politicians to help fund a renovation of its existing stadium or build a new baseball park. Henderson is part of the Las Vegas market. Nothing came of the talks and no other area in the Phoenix region seemed interested in building a stadium. Now a deal is at hand.
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