‘We may run out of time in Phoenix’: Diamondbacks frustrated with Chase Field deal

Diamondbacks Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick expressed disappointment over his organization’s inability to secure public funding to renovate Chase Field, suggesting that despite a desire to remain in Arizona the club could eventually look to move elsewhere if an agreement cannot be reached.

Speaking to reporters on Monday before the team’s first full-squad workout of spring training, Kendrick and Derrick Hall, the club’s president and CEO, lamented the fact that other big league teams across the country — as well as other local professional sports teams such as the Phoenix Suns — have managed to reach deals with municipalities to renovate their facilities while the Diamondbacks repeatedly have been unable to do the same.

“We may run out of time in Phoenix,” Kendrick said. “We hope that won't happen.”

Both Kendrick and Hall spoke to the club in a team meeting ahead of the Diamondbacks’ workout on Monday morning, reiterating a message manager Torey Lovullo has delivered about last year’s club “setting a standard” going forward. He said he believes the club has gone from hoping to thinking to knowing it can win.

“My thought about it is, last year I think we were hopeful playing October baseball,” Kendrick said. “This year, I think we expect to play October baseball, and if we don't, we'll be disappointed.”

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Kendrick reiterated that his ownership group is willing to spend “hundreds of millions” of its own money to refurbish Chase Field, a project the club estimates will cost somewhere between $400-$500 million.

Chase Field, which opened in 1998, is the fourth-oldest ballpark in the National League. The three that are older — Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium and Coors Field — have undergone more in the way of renovations than Chase Field.

Kendrick said the club’s ownership group has invested more in Chase Field over the years than the $238 million in taxpayer funds that helped finance its construction in the mid-1990s. The team still has a lease that runs through 2027.

Kendrick said he was not trying to issue a threat to the state about moving, saying multiple times the Diamondbacks were not currently engaged in discussions with other markets about leaving town.

“There is likely to be, in time, an expansion of our sport to a couple of additional cities,” Kendrick said. “Cities are letting MLB know their interest; their interest in getting a team is specific. They would be happy with a brand new franchise, but they would certainly be very happy, you know, with, frankly, a successful, existing franchise.

"It’s not where we are spending time or energy. We may run out of time in Phoenix. We hope that won't happen. We’re hard at it; we’re continuing to have meetings. We've ramped up the dialogue in every way that we know how and we'll continue to do that.”

Kendrick added: “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. Our franchise is part of the fabric of Arizona, and that’s where we want it to be for forever. When I’m long gone, which isn’t going to be very long into the future from now, I would like to have — we call it ‘Chase Field reimagined.’ 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.”

Kendrick mentioned Baltimore, Cleveland and Milwaukee — calling them cities that, “frankly, are not as economically vibrant as our city is, our community is” — that have reached public/private financing agreements to renovate their major league ballparks to “state-of-the-art levels.”

“We’re, frankly, disappointed we haven't been able to do it,” Kendrick said. “We’re going to keep working. We're not ever going to stop working to get this problem taken care of. But it’s taken longer and it’s not been as easy to get done as we would have hoped. We would have liked to have been standing here today having reached a plan, being able to announce it perhaps before now and to have had you all know what our intentions are going forward. But right now, we can’t give you a plan on what we're going to do because we don't have an agreement.”

Hall said half the cost of a Chase Field project, one that likely would need to be completed in stages and could take around four years to complete, could go to infrastructure updates. He said the team would like to upgrade the club seating and suites and create more areas for families as well as look into further developing the land surrounding the ballpark.

While Hall said the club still has conversations with “local parties” interested in relocating the Diamondbacks within the Valley, Kendrick said building a new ballpark is “not the smartest investment to make.”

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“We have to have climate control (and) that makes the cost of building even greater and the math, it just doesn't work,” Kendrick said. “It is a business. And if you are the one writing the check to invest your money, you'd like to think you can build a business model where there is some potential, at some point, where there could be a return on that investment, and the return would be increasing revenues. Which, what do we do when we increase revenues? We invest in a better team on the field, and when we have a better team on the field, we create a better result. And that's really what my interests are in all of this.”

The Diamondbacks still have the option of activating a tax “district” at Chase Field that would levy a surcharge on all transactions to raise funds for a renovation. Both Kendrick and Hall have said multiple times they do not want to go that route.

“I think we’ve always prided ourselves in being an affordable ticket, an affordable evening for a family, and adding an entertainment tax on top of the ticketing is on the back of our customers,” Kendrick said. “We would like to avoid that.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: ‘We may run out of time in Phoenix’: DBacks seeking Chase Field deal