While we are waiting for the summer monsoon to begin let’s do a recap of where we are with the ball park.
Their numbers are wrong
Various city officials stood before council and made official presentations
The city hall move will only cost $33 million
We are now over $70 million. The fact is that the city officials had not studied the costs thoroughly and simply made a presentation designed to get council to vote favorably.
The ballpark will only cost $50 million
They wanted a construction manager at risk — no bidding involved
The construction manager would get to keep a percentage of what was not needed of the construction budget. That was designed to make us think that the ball park could be built for less.
The city manager recently told us that they do not know what the ball park will cost. They only have 20% of the bids in and will have to wait to see how much it will cost. No serious study was given to the cost of the ball park before they stood before council.
The owners are not giving up $12 million. Before this whole deal was sold to city council the owners said that they would donate their profits to charity for the foreseeable future. The $12 million is being stolen from charity by the city.
Someone else will pay for the ball park
The hotel occupancy tax numbers are only estimates (from the same city staff that has made the other estimates). There is no guarantee that those monies will come in. The team ownership is committing to pay us over a 30 year lease. What will happen if something goes wrong? I would imagine that the ownership group might have to declare bankruptcy, thus leaving the citizens of El Paso responsible to make the bond payments.
We must do this immediately
Hasty, irresponsible actions were taken because we were told that the ball park must be open at the beginning of the 2014 season.
Plans for the ball park have not even been drawn up yet. We need plans first, bidding next, and then construction. The chances of getting this done in time are negligible. They always were.
City staff recently tried to buy the Diablos out of their lease of Cohen stadium. Is it possible that they want the new team to play at Cohen while the ball park is being built?
Cohen is not acceptable
According to city staff, no amount of money spent for improvements to our existing ball park would make it acceptable to league management.
I simply do not believe them.
Now city staff tells us
The team owners are willing pay $12 million more
City staff came before council recently and asked for $10 million more to build a ball park “the public wants”. $5 million was going to come from previously approved projects for sidewalks and streets. The other $5 million was for contingencies.
Now the owners themselves say that $8 million more needs to be spent on the basic ball park. What about the $10 million city staff asked for and got turned down on? The city manager told us that moving the $5 million from sidewalks and streets into the project would simplify coordination of the projects. In other words, the city is going to spend the $5 million sprucing up the areas around the ball park anyway. That puts us at $50 + $8 + $5 or $63 million without the contingency fund.
As the city manager recently confessed, no one knows what this will cost. I would have been in favor of a properly researched and planned project.
I think that the ball park should now be built even though the way we got here was horrible.
I hope that the new city council slows this deal down and gets real numbers before we get in even deeper. At the very least the contracts should be changed to eliminate any penalties to the city if the ball park is not finished in time. After all, the ball park owners are the ones that are asking for the changes.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
With regard to the lease, I doubt our city manager had the courage to ask Foster and Hunt to personally guarantee the ballpark lease, but if a local business wanted to lease a building from one of them, those tough businessmen would insist that the business owner provide a personal guarantee.
It’s very likely that the revised budget will also be exceeded. Autozone ballpark in Memphis cost more than $100 million in today’s dollars. BB&T in Charlotte and Bricktown in OKC both cost about $60 million in today’s dollars and everyone involved knew that when they represented this as a $50 million project. Even Tucson’s ballpark, which just looks like Cohen with more decks, cost more than $50 million.
The other big lie is related to the ballpark being ready next Spring. That date was also fabricated as a tool to help rush the decision process. As I mentioned in another post:
– Autozone Park in Memphis broke ground in January 1998 and opened in April 2000.
– Oklahoma City’s Bricktown ballpark (the one a large El Paso entourage visited and used as their role model) broke ground in October 1995 and opened in April 1998, well after the planned opening date.
– BB&T ballpark in Charlotte broke ground in Sept 2012 and opened in April 2014.
– Simplistic Tucson Electric Park took a full year to build.
– Renovation alone of Cheney Stadium in Tacoma took eight months even after lots of advance planning.
Brutus will probably be writing about the ballpark for the next two years. The team will likely play at Cohen next season.
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WILSON DID NOT GET JOB IN FL. TURNED IT DOWN. FL. SAID SHE WAS JUST FISHING FOR MORE $$$$.
SO OSCAR IS KEEPING HER ON. SHE HAS A CONTRACT WITH CITY.
AS FOR NEWSPAPER IF I WERE OSCAR, THERE WOULD BE ONLY CITY ADVERTISEMENT WITH EL PASO INC AND FOR DEALERSHIP AS WELL.
CITY EMPLOYEES BETTER BE CAREFUL. SHE IS LIABLE TO INVEST ALL THE CITY PENSION PLAN IN CITY BONDS A LA ENRON. LETS BUILD A BALL PARK. MY $$ WILL NOT GO TO THOSE BONDS.
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Did she state publicly that she was fishing for money?
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