The process is ongoing to get a deal for a stadium renovation and a big hurdle has been cleared as the City of Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Jaguars have reached an agreement and have presented it to the city council.
The lease agreement on the table would be for 30 years if approved and will include a non-relocation clause attached to it, assuring Jacksonville as the team’s home for the next three decades.
“It was clear to me from the very beginning that we needed a much fairer agreement than the one we had the last time, and the Jaguars were willing to help provide that,” said Jacksonville mayor Donna Deegan, during the latest community huddle held in the Fletcher High School auditorium on May 20.
According to Deegan, the last stadium lease was one-sided with the city taking on the brunt of the cost, and that is not the case in the proposed deal, which puts more emphasis on sharing the responsibilities that go with a stadium.
They went about achieving this by proposing to split the cost of the stadium construction 50/50. The project is estimated to cost $1.4 billion.
The cost includes the city putting in $150 million to help in the preparation and early project construction costs to get it started, but the Jaguars in turn have agreed to cover all excess costs if the project exceeds $1.4 billion.
“We felt like we needed something that was fair to the taxpayers,” Deegan said. “Our part with the city is fixed, so what you see is what we’re going to spend.”
The outline of the deal includes the city of Jacksonville’s portion of the deal being paid up front, while the Jaguars will accumulate their portion over the next 30 years, which according to Deegan will equate to about $5 million per year during the length of the 30-year lease.
“Nobody wants to spend this kind of money, but at the end of the day, the NFL was very clear that without a new stadium that was up to NFL standards, we were not going to have a team, and I know that we all want to keep our team and to have downtown as successful as it possibly can be,” Deegan said.
City representative Mike Weinstein acknowledged that the University of Georgia and the University of Florida have been kept in the loop of the proposed renovations throughout the process and have shown excitement for what the future holds in terms of the annual Florida-Georgia college football game held at the stadium.
“A big discussion was who was going to pay for the building and who was going to be in charge of the maintenance so that we get the 30-year expected life out of the facility,” Weinstein said.
As a result, the Jaguars will take on the responsibility of the day-to-day operation and maintenance of the stadium, which is a major change from the current lease but lines up with the agreements across other NFL cities, according to Weinstein.
Other cost shifting in the proposed lease will include the Jaguars taking on more gameday expenses, which will cut the city’s cost per gameday from roughly $7 million to $1.5 million, as they will just be responsible for public safety items such as staffing JSO and fire and rescue.
One thing that the Jaguars presented and were pushing during the previous community huddles was an entertainment district.
Deegan assured the crowd in attendance that she understands the importance of growing downtown and ways to do that, such as an entertainment district will take center stage once the stadium renovation is in place.
