{"id":15480,"date":"2016-06-24T02:38:23","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T02:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=15480"},"modified":"2016-06-24T02:38:23","modified_gmt":"2016-06-24T02:38:23","slug":"city-seeking-a-commitment-to-use-mpev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=15480","title":{"rendered":"City seeking a commitment to use MPEV"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

\"baseball-pic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Amarillo wants a commitment, a signed contract from the potential tenants who’ll want to play baseball in the city’s proposed downtown ballpark.<\/p>\n

I get it. What’s next, though, is beginning to get a bit murky.<\/p>\n

San Antonio’s Missions baseball team declined to sign a letter of intent to move from South Texas into the proposed MPEV in downtown Amarillo.<\/p>\n

Amarillo’s Local Government Corporation is going to proceed with negotiations with a sports group that owns several baseball franchises, including the AA San Antonio Missions.<\/p>\n

The Missions might move to Amarillo after San Antonio lands a AAA franchise that will play in a stadium there.<\/p>\n

Amarillo Deputy City Manager Bob Cowell says it’s still a possibility, but that the city has “less breathing room” than it had before.<\/p>\n

I’m getting a bit nervous about this. I don’t seriously doubt the merits of what Amarillo wants to do. I am beginning have concern that the LGC is capable of nailing down the commitment from the Missions to actually move here by, say, 2019.<\/p>\n

Amarillo wants to open the MPEV for business by the spring of 2018. A city official in the know told me today that the city plans to start knocking down the now-vacant Coca-Cola distribution center on the MPEV site later this summer.<\/p>\n

If the Coca-Cola site is demolished, it should stand to reason to expect that construction on the MPEV would commence shortly thereafter. Is that right?<\/p>\n

Well, have we seen any design yet? Has the city received a definitive cost of the ballpark\/MPEV? It started out at $32 million, but the cost rose to about $50 million when the LGC announced plans to go after the AA franchise.<\/p>\n

I understand the reason for the inflated cost.<\/p>\n

What’s beginning to make me sweat, though, is whether the LGC is able to juggle all the balls required to ensure that we’ll have a tenant in the MPEV when the city cuts the ribbon to open it.<\/p>\n

I will remain optimistic. With caution.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amarillo wants a commitment, a signed contract from the potential tenants who’ll want to play baseball in the city’s proposed downtown ballpark. I get it. What’s next, though, is beginning to get a bit murky. San Antonio’s Missions baseball team declined to sign a letter of intent to move from South Texas into the proposed … Continue reading City seeking a commitment to use MPEV<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9,17],"tags":[290,5638,3153,5778],"class_list":["post-15480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-news","category-local-news","category-sports-news","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-lgc","tag-mpev","tag-san-antonio-missions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15480"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15483,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15480\/revisions\/15483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}