[Cider Jim]

Somewhere, HMO is dancing in the streets.

Hillcats expected to stay after Wilmington stadium nixed
By: Chris Lang | The News & Advance
Published: November 07, 2012
A potential deal to move the Lynchburg Hillcats minor league baseball team to Wilmington, N.C. was shot down by voters there Tuesday.

In February, the Hillcats dropped a bombshell on area baseball fans — if the citizens of Wilmington, N.C., would agree to help build a new stadium there, the Atlanta Braves would buy the Hillcats and move them south before the start of the 2014 season.

The sale and move were contingent on the stadium. And as the Braves and Mandalay Baseball began exploring ways to finance the stadium, they realized they faced an uphill battle in a city that has never been keen on tax raises. Later in the summer, Wilmington City Council agreed to put a referendum on the November ballot and let the voters decide the fate of the Wilmington Braves.

The citizens of Wilmington spoke Tuesday on Election Day, and the answer was a resounding “no.” The referendum to build a publicly funded stadium failed by an overwhelming 70-30 percent margin, meaning Carolina League baseball will remain in Lynchburg for the foreseeable future.

http://www2.newsadvance.com/sports/2012 ... r-2344412/

[badger74]

Good news for the city. Hillcats are a part of the city now.

[rogers3]

Maybe HMO can weigh in. Is there any chance that a deal might be struck with Atlanta to keep the team here long-term, or does Lynchburg just wait til the next southern town (Greenville, NC has mentioned a ballpark as of late) builds a park for the Braves and the team heads south. Is there something wrong with our stadium?

[jbock13]

Your stadium is small, and old compared to most advanced A ballparks. Personally I don't think it's a bad atmosphere but it's just kind of cramped. The closest thing I remember to it was the old Winston Salem stadium before they built the new one.

[TDDance234]

Maybe HMO can weigh in. Is there any chance that a deal might be struck with Atlanta to keep the team here long-term, or does Lynchburg just wait til the next southern town (Greenville, NC has mentioned a ballpark as of late) builds a park for the Braves and the team heads south. Is there something wrong with our stadium?

The Braves class-A team is the last in its system to not have a brand new state of the art ballpark. Zero chance they stay longer than 2015, IMO.

[Hold My Own]

Well, the Atlanta Braves have little interest in not owning every team in their minor league system so really thats the issue at hand...not the stadium. I'm a firm believer that there is a baseball bubble that you'll be seeing burst here soon. Teams like Winston-Salem have a break-even analysis of having to sell out every game...meanwhile I think they had 700 people at one of their last playoff games. Believe it or not Lynchburg does very well attendance wise and when you consider our population against all of the other teams we're hands down the smallest by quite a bit. This year was a down year but that's simply because of weather, we had more rainouts then we've had in quite some time.

With all of that said baseball isnt secure in my mind here in Lynchburg...the owners are open to the idea of selling for the first time since my grandfather put the group together in the 50's...he's no longer here to protect the cities best interest. My hope is this will give our city a wakeup call and they will understand we'll lose baseball if we do not continue to make stadium improvements. The city only gave a loan to the Hillcats for the stadium improvements a few years ago and the loan has been paid in full and on time every year...last year we even paid above the amount owed. Lynchburg Baseball Corp has never once taken a dime of profit from it and my grandfather always made sure it was reinvested back into the team/city. I dont think that could work for the long term, at some point the city will have to make an investment into the stadium with the idea of it being a capital improvement to the stadium that the city owns.

To compete in today's game you still dont need a 70 million dollar stadium, heck the last renovation was only around $4 million meanwhile everyone else was spending astronomical amounts of money for stadiums their city will never support. Lynchburg's growing and I completely believe the Lynchburg market will look completely different in 10 years...but we just have to hold on until then. Really keeping a team isnt my concern its keeping the owners from doing something I dont support. When we were shopping for teams a few years ago we had 3 or 4 different teams begging to come to here...we had the Reds who were currently here but didnt run an organization that we were used to so we wanted to look for other options. The Rangers were planning to come here but the owner of Myrtle Beach purchased the Texas Rangers therefore he was forced by MLB to move out the Braves and move the Rangers in...which is how we got the Braves. We have options after 2015, perhaps we compromise with the Braves and change the name of the Hillcats to the Lynchburg Braves, believe it or not that's really important to them. Then we retain ownership (thus keeping the current location) and make the Braves happy, or we find another team.

Really none of that matters though if the owners have made up their mind to sell...this is what I'm fighting. The team stuff will work itself out, it always does. Keep in mind though MiLB will only allow a team to sign a 4 year agreement or a 8 year agreement so there really isnt such a thing as "long term" in baseball. My grandfather actually led the committee that put that together, it's a great thing for smaller cities like ourselves because it forces teams to find a replacement if they decide to leave.

To answer your question though Rogers our stadium is by no means flashy or what you find in the larger cities but its still adequate. We'll need some video board/score board improvements soon though to keep pace.

[Purple Haize]

Lynchburg Brave Hillcats. Problem solved. Next

[Chris Lang]

Spot on analysis from HMO, the ultimate insider in this situation. A new video/scoreboard would do wonders for the aesthetics of City Stadium. The technology is so outdated that they still run Windows 2000 on the computers in the press box that operate the video board. The Braves did a nice job of sprucing up the home club house, and the field itself is in better shape than it's been since I've been in town. The stadium itself doesn't need to be bigger because aside from rare occasions (4th of July, breast cancer awareness night), the stadium isn't anywhere near full capacity.

This certainly was a wake-up call to the rest of the city to realize just how much the franchise means to people. A drop from the Carolina League to the Appy League would be staggering in terms of the quality of baseball you see on a day-to-day basis. I know that's not a concern to most who go to games. They go for the promotions, for the kid-friendly atmosphere, the chance to drink a few inexpensive barley pops and hang out with friends. But you also get a chance to watch a lot of really good baseball players in this league, guys who can make an impact in the majors sooner rather than later, guys like Andrelton Simmons, Tommy Hanson, Jason Heyward, Matt Wieters, Pedro Alvarez. It's really a cool thing for a city this size to have.

But a precedent has been set. Ownership didn't necessarily shop the team, but they listened when presented with a sweetheart deal. Fortunately for Lynchburg, the Braves tried to get public money to build a stadium in a city that is ardently anti-tax. I don't know how, in this economy, you can sell a publicly financed stadium anywhere these days. Wilmington was certainly the wrong choice in that regard.

[Sly Fox]

The way most minor league facilities are being financed these days are through hotel sales taxes. Obviously that would impact one segment of Lynchburg more than any other. If the City of Lynchburg gives the Braves a reason to stick with town for awhile by showing a good faith effort to upgrade the stadium it would probably by baseball fans in Central Virginia some more time.

I remember watching a slew of future Hall of Famers playing at City Stadium back in the L-Mets & L-Sox days. The team is an institution in a community lacking many commonalities. Let's hope that it is embraced and not allowed to fade out of sight to a city with more vision.

[Chris Lang]

And Wilmington tried to sell a property tax rather than a hotel sales tax, which is why it was a non starter. Nearly everything built in Arizona, both the Coyotes and Cardinals stadium, came from tourism taxes, both on hotels and rental cars. It's a lot easier to sell it when you're taking from someone else's pockets rather than your own.

[Sly Fox]

Exactly.

And the other big factor that is impacting minor league sports is a trend of moving franchises into suburbs of major metropolitan areas from more rural locations. I would suspect a bigger concern for Lynchburg moving forward is not the team moving to another small-to-medium city. Rather I would be more concerned that Braves might prefer to have their top prospects playing in Alpharetta or Duluth, GA where it would be easier to raise public funds for a stadium. The conventional mindset was that if a major league club was in a city, there really wasn't room in the market for minor league operations. That concept has been blown up in recent years. Take a look at a ballpark in the suburb that the Sanders brothers & Tolu call home here in Houston:



The Sugar Land Skeeters are drawing great numbers playing in an independent league which is a big step down from the High-A Carolina League and even bigger drop down from Minute Maid Park. Lynchburg has a great product on the field that I am not sure the market truly appreciates.