San Manuel Stadium in San Bernardino, Calif. on Tuesday, July 19, 2016. City of San Bernardino is considering selling San Manuel Stadium to the Inland Empire 66ers, who play there, or another entity as the end of the team’s lease approaches on Dec. 31.
SAN BERNARDINO >> This is the 20th season the Inland Empire 66ers have played in this city, and it might be their last.The City Council received a report Monday on negotiations over the minor league baseball team’s lease of the stadium — known since 2012 as San Manuel Stadium — and financial hurdles that could prevent its renewal once it expires Dec. 31.
It’s not that the city wants to sell the property for a profit. Rather, the 66ers’ proposed lease extension asks the city to give them a subsidy of $2.3 million to pay for capital repairs and another $250,000 for maintenance and operating costs.And that’s money the city doesn’t have — at least, not budgeted in the bankruptcy exit plan it is trying to get a court to approve. Including the stadium, the city now faces $18.9 million in capital projects seeking funding — the other projects are Carousel Mall, California Theatre and the Convention Center — and $16.7 million in funds available for that purpose, according to Community Development Director Mark Persico.
The City Council decided Monday to create a three-member committee that will study options for the stadium, noting that information important to their eventual decision wasn’t yet available. That includes the terms of the current lease and a study on the economic impact of the team playing in San Bernardino.But the decision goes beyond pure dollars and cents, said Councilman Fred Shorett.“This is a decision about keeping baseball in San Bernardino, is what it comes down to,” Shorett said Monday. “It’s not a revenue generator, exactly, but there are other intangibles we can’t quite put our finger on.
I’m concerned about another headline that says ‘Sixers leave San Bernardino.’ We’ve lost how many businesses?”Indeed, icon after icon has departed the city, and officials acknowledge its reputation has suffered. Since the 2012 bankruptcy filing alone, that litany includes the Route 66 Rendezvous leaving for Ontario, though a smaller version is back downtown; the California Welcome Center Inland Empire and San Bernardino Convention & Visitors Bureau cited a lack of funds for its closure; and decades-old businesses like The Mug and Le Rendez-Vous Restaurant.But other developments are coming.
In the downtown area of the stadium, plans are underway to revitalize the Carousel Mall and Theater Square — using the same pot of money that would be used for the stadium — a $65 million health care and health education initiative plans to start offering services in September (adjacent to the stadium) and the San Bernardino Transit Center opened a year ago.“I look at most things through the bankruptcy and recovery from bankruptcy, and I think the negative implications of losing a baseball team can have an impact on the city’s ability to recover,” City Attorney Gary Saenz said Tuesday. “I think a baseball team has an economic impact, I think it has a perception impact on our residents, and I think it has a perception impact on potential businesses.”Councilman Jim Mulvihill said the stadium’s 1990s construction was premised on promises of restaurants and other economic renewal around it, which didn’t happen then and he doesn’t expect in the near future.
“My point is that I don’t think there’s a great deal of attendance,” Mulvihill said Monday. “We do use it for major gatherings of the public, but we could use other places for that as well. From my point of view, I just tend to resist throwing good money after bad. Unless we can actually prove there’s going to be some benefit to it, we’ve got other places to spend several million dollars over the long run.”
Michael Bracken, managing partner at Development Management Group, said the team produced an economic impact of more than $12 million per year.
In the team’s 25 years in San Bernardino — five at Perris Hill Park’s Fiscalini Field and 20 at the stadium — more than 3.5 million people have watched them play and more than 1 million have come to other events at the stadium, according to Bracken.
“In every sense, the Inland Empire 66ers really epitomize minor league baseball,” Bracken, representing the team, said Monday. “Time is of the essence. We do have an agreement with the (Los Angeles) Angels of Anaheim ... We’re not able to fulfill that agreement without a facility in which to play baseball.”
The three-person committee was formed in response to the urgency. The date of the committee meeting was not yet set as of Tuesday, according to city spokeswoman Monica Lagos.
City Manager Mark Scott estimated that maintaining an empty stadium would cost $150,000 per year, and would still lead to deterioration of the stadium.
Already, items in need of repair included cracked exterior stucco, waterproof concrete in the seating area, deteriorated stadium seating and a new public address system, according to a tabulation by city consultant Urban Futures.
The city’s options include selling the property — to the 66ers, the county of San Bernardino or Cal State San Bernardino — leasing to the 66ers with the requested subsidy, making the 66ers repair and operate it without a subsidy, and putting the property up for auction.
Professional baseball was first played off and on in San Bernardino since 1899, according to the 66ers’ website. After a 37-year drought, the city has for the most part had a home team, affiliated with the Seattle Mariners, Los Angeles Dodgers and — since 2011 — the Angels.