An agreement to rebuild the facility may be reached by May.
It appears that the owner of the National Football League’s Jacksonville Jaguars franchise, Shad Khan, is going to get a rebuilt stadium in Jacksonville. Mike Weinstein, the city of Jacksonville’s chief negotiator, said the two sides are still working through how long renovations will take. It is expected that the stadium renovations will cost more than a billion dollars. In October 2023, Khan was getting impatient with local leaders who were not coming up with public money for the business’ stadium renovation. The National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell probably reminded Jacksonville leaders of Khan’s impatience and pointed out that taxpayers in New York, Tennessee and Maryland were doing the right thing, by NFL owners, and were paying for new facilities or modernizing old venues. It is unclear how much the public will be paying for the stadium facelift and how much Khan will kick into the stadium renovation. In 1995, Jacksonville opened the city’s rebuilt Gator Bowl after receiving an NFL expansion franchise. The price tag on the municipal stadium was $121 million. The stadium has been renovated a number of times since its opening. Jacksonville has never developed into the lucrative market that the NFL projected when it was awarded a team in 1993.
Khan’s football team does not play a full home schedule. In 2022, Khan received the go ahead from NFL owners which allowed his team to play an annual game at London’s Wembley Stadium through 2024. The Jaguars’ financial department claims that the business generates about 11% of its local revenue by playing in London. The Jacksonville stadium had about $180 million worth of renovations from 2012 through 2019. But the stadium was still bordering on being obsolete according to the Jaguars’ team president Mark Lamping even after all the improvements. Khan has six seasons left on his deal but time has come to get a stadium deal done.
Jaguars owner wants a new or renovated stadium.
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