So now Winston-Salem will have a downtown baseball stadium of its very own, with taxpayers’ help:
Major sticking points for a proposed baseball stadium on the western edge of downtown have been worked out, and plans for the $22.6 million stadium will head to the city’s finance committee for review Monday, Mayor Allen Joines said yesterday.
…The financial mix includes bond money, federal grants, loans, tax-based incentives and private financing. Over 20 years, Joines said, the city will get more revenue from the project than it pays out, and it will wind up owning the stadium.
To pay for the stadium, Sports Menagerie, the entity that owns the Warthogs, would invest up to $8.6 million, a federal transportation grant would pay $2 million, the non-profit Millennium Fund would lend $1 million, and the city would put in $11 million in borrowed money.
The stadium is the first part of a larger project estimated to bring in at least $170 million in public and private investments.
In addition to a 5,500-seat baseball stadium, the overall development would put a 30-acre village of stores, residences, offices, restaurants and a movie theater between Broad Street, Peters Creek Parkway, Business 40 and Brookstown Avenue.
Greensboro’s First Horizon Park was held up as an example of a successful downtown stadium. But this week’s news about Bellmeade Village proves that developers don’t always deliver what they promise. But you can bet the taxpayers will deliver what they, um, promise.
