As if the city council’s kiss-off of any plan to bring the Florida Marlins to Charlotte was not final enough, the team is getting hot and heavy with folks down in San Antonio. Bexar County officials are floating a hike in the hotel and car rental tax (hmmm, sounds familiar) in order to put $200 million towards a new baseball stadium for the team.
For that to happen the team and county need a memorandum of understand on the deal to be finished before the August 15 deadline for putting the tax hike on the November ballot. Then, of course, voters must approve the tax hike. Baseball officials, meanwhile, prefer that the team stay in South Florida.
These developments leave Don Beaver’s plan to put a non-property tax paying minor league stadium in Uptown clearly the favorite path for bringing the baseball back to Charlotte proper. The fact that we’ve suddenly heard very little about that plan surely means it is about to be sprung on us as a done-deal.
