Tuesday, May 18, 1999
Reds, county near lease
Team would commit for 30 years
BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Hamilton County and the Cincinnati Reds are close to signing a lease for a new $297 million riverfront ballpark that will keep the team in town for the next 30 years.
“We've made good progress with the Reds over the last couple of months,” County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus said Monday.
“We've been down this road many times now, and we've found it ain't soup till it's soup,” he added. “And it ain't soup yet.”
County officials wouldn't speculate how quickly a lease would be signed. Mr. Beding-
haus said it's “certainly possible” the deal could be done before suspended CEO Marge Schott completes her sale of the team.
That would make signing the lease — the linchpin of the Reds' financial health for the next generation — one of Mrs. Schott's last official duties in her tumultuous 15-year tenure as majority owner.
County Administrator David Krings said the lease now is in the hands of lawyers. County officials had nothing signed by either Reds Managing Executive John Allen or Mrs. Schott as of Monday; they want a lease document signed by both.
At their meeting next month, baseball owners are expected to approve the sale of the Reds to Cincinnati financier Carl Lindner, American Laundry Machinery Corp. Chairman George Strike and Bill Reik, a Northern Kentucky native and Wall Street executive. All three are now limited partners in the team, as is the Gannett Co., which owns The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Mr. Allen, who has been running the team since Mrs. Schott was suspended, could not be reached Monday. He has said Mr. Lindner has been kept up to speed on lease negotiations all along.
Mr. Lindner appeared with Mrs. Schott and presented to her a gold star pendant from Tiffany & Co. in July when the county and team announced the signing of an agreement that set out the financial elements of the stadium deal.
That agreement called for a 45,000-seat ballpark with a natural grass field to be completed in time for the 2003 season. The ballpark will be built just west of Firstar Center at a site known as Baseball on Main.
The site also has been termed the “Wedge” because part of Cinergy Field and its parking garage will have to be demolished to build the new ballpark while the Reds continue to play in Cinergy.
The July agreement also refers to a $235 million stadium. But that cost represents 1998 dollars, which will be adjusted for inflation, and doesn't include the cost of land, parking, financing or any additional costs due to the complications of the site.
More recent county estimates have put the ballpark's cost at $297 million, which could go higher still.
The county will pay most of that cost using proceeds from the half-cent sales tax increase voters approved in 1996 for stadium construction.
The July agreement calls for the Reds to contribute $30 million: $10 million at the time of groundbreaking, $10 million on the first anniversary of the groundbreaking and the remaining $10 million at or prior to substantial completion of the stadium.
The team also is to pay $2.5 million annually in rent for the first nine years of the 30-year lease and $1 annually for the remaining years.
In that deal, the county also guaranteed the team will earn at least $250,000 a year from the rental of private suites starting in 1998 until the new stadium is finished.
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