Fresno bails out stadium tenants

City rewrites lease rather than risk losing Grizzlies.

Published online on Tuesday, Feb. 03, 2009

On a dreary December morning, Fresno Grizzlies partner Chris Cummings stands in center field at Chukchansi Park and looks toward home plate.

"I love the view," Cummings says. "It's a lot nicer when full of people."

There's the problem. Fresno's $46 million downtown stadium hasn't been full of people nearly often enough since it opened on May 1, 2002. The Fresno Baseball Club, which owns the minor-league team and is the city-owned stadium's only tenant, is losing close to a million dollars a year, city officials say.

That's why the City Council on Nov. 18 came to the rescue, approving with little debate what City Manager Andy Souza calls a "relief" package for the Grizzlies' owners. The move rewrites the stadium lease to effectively cut the team owner's rent by more than $500,000 a year.

This is the same lease that City Hall took a decade -- often with bitter debate -- to work out with the Fresno Diamond Group, original owner of the Grizzlies.

No matter. The lease, Council Member Brian Calhoun said at the Nov. 18 council meeting, "was no good."

The complaints: too expensive for the tenant, with its $1.5 million annual rent; too demanding of the tenant, who was expected to keep the stadium filled 12 months a year; too confining to a City Hall anxious to take a more active role in turning Chukchansi Park into a true multiuse stadium.

Under the lease revisions, which took effect this month, a $1 city fee is added to every ticket sold at Chukchansi Park and applied for five years as rent credit.

The fee is expected to generate about $600,000 annually.

The Fresno Baseball Club becomes a part-time renter -- an estimated 92 days a year.

For the rest of the year, City Hall takes over the stadium.

"It's a win-win," Council Member Jerry Duncan says.

The new deal "is good for the city and will help our organization achieve a greater level of financial stability and viability," Fresno Baseball Club partner Brian Glover says.

But former Council Member Garry Bredefeld, who helped negotiate the original lease, points out that the city wasn't able to use all the days it had under the old lease.

Says Bredefeld: "It doesn't make sense."

Stadium deal took years

In 1988 -- soon after the Class A Fresno Giants left for San Jose and the grandstands at their ballpark, John Euless Park, were declared structurally unsound -- Council Member Rod Anaforian suggested City Hall explore ways to build an $8 million 12,000- to 15,000-seat stadium to attract a Triple A ballclub.

In 1991, veteran concert promoter and minor-league sports executive John Carbray formed the Fresno Diamond Group. The next year, he signed an exclusive deal with City Hall to build a new stadium. The two challenges were financing and stadium design. Should the Diamond Group build and own the stadium? Should it be city-owned, with a lease? What's the right capacity?

A political fight on a scale seldom seen in Fresno began. After the City Council rejected a stadium proposal in 1997, stadium supporters tried to recall Mayor Jim Patterson in part because he allegedly lobbied against the deal.

The Grizzlies team was born in Fresno in 1998 even without a stadium deal, playing home games at Fresno State's Beiden Field. This added pressure to build a permanent home.

On Oct. 17, 2000, another stadium deal went to the City Council. The council chamber was packed, mostly with supporters. Patterson opposed the deal, saying it was too expensive to taxpayers. The city would build and own the 12,500-seat stadium. Payments on the construction bonds would be shared by the city and the tenant.