The Diamondbacks have been seeking a public funding agreement to upgrade Chase Field. With no deal agreed upon by the beginning of Spring Training, owner Ken Kendrick and team president Derrick Hall expressed their frustration this afternoon.
“We’re at the point where we’re just trying to figure out the best possible partnership, public-private, we can have that would keep us at Chase Field,” Hall told reporters (including Alex Weiner of Arizona Sports and Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic). “That’s been our preference, to stay at Chase and invest in Chase. … There’s a bit of frustration on my part because we thought we’d be at a position now where we could announce exactly what’s happening.”
Kendrick addressed speculation that the lack of progress has led the D-Backs to open conversations with cities outside Arizona. The owner acknowledged the number of municipalities that would welcome an MLB team but stated that the Diamondbacks are “not in dialogue with those communities” and that is “not where we are spending time or energy.” However, he added that the team “may run out of time in Phoenix. We hope that won’t happen. … We’re continuing to have meetings, we’ve ramped up the dialogue in every way that we know how.”
In a follow-up, Kendrick denied that comment was meant to threaten the state with relocation. “I don’t think, in the world that we live in, threats are the right way to do business. We’re community people. I’ve raised my family here; Derrick has raised his family here. We’re a part of the fabric,” he said. “Our franchise is part of the fabric of Arizona, and that’s where we want it to be for forever. … That is our hope at the moment, that we will have that and be able to announce that, and we’re still aggressively interested in making that happen.”
Chase Field opened in 1998 when the D-Backs entered the league as an expansion franchise. The team’s lease runs through the 2027 season. The organizational preference is to renovate the park as opposed to constructing a new stadium, which Kendrick categorized as too expensive.
The club’s renovation plans come with an estimated price tag between $400-500MM, the organization said. It’s unclear how much of that bill the D-Backs want to be publicly funded. Kendrick stated that his ownership group was prepared “to invest hundreds of millions of dollars of our money.”
According to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, the Diamondbacks opened the last three seasons with a player payroll in the bottom third of MLB. They’re up to 16th in projected spending for the upcoming campaign. On the heels of their surprising NL pennant, they’ve pushed spending to a franchise-record mark approaching $143MM.
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