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SALT LAKE CITY — A bill that sets up the framework to finance a potential Major League Baseball stadium in Utah cleared the fence in its first legislative at-bat.
Members of the House Government Operations Committee voted 8-2 on Friday to advance a revised version of HB562 to the House floor following a hearing that attempted to address all the pros and cons of the bill in one hour.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, would set up a Utah Fairpark Area Investment and Restoration District by the Utah State Fairpark and Rocky Mountain Power land that it is in the process of redeveloping. It would also set up a board of various state and local stakeholders to govern it.
Adjustments to energy sales and use, telecommunications license, transient room tax, resort communities sales and use tax and accommodations and services taxes would help provide funds to the district, which may or may not include an MLB stadium.
A stadium is what stands out the most with the bill. HB562 would direct "half the actual cost of developing and constructing the qualified stadium or $900 million" toward the development, based on the estimated $1.8 billion cost for a stadium in the district. However, this component of the bill is only triggered if MLB picks Salt Lake City or an existing team decides to move to Salt Lake City by June 30, 2032.
Wilcox said it's believed that MLB will have made a relocation decision by that time. The stadium itself would be owned by the state and the team owner would be the tenant, paying a lease back to the state of about $150,000 per month over 30 years. The team would also be responsible for all construction, maintenance and stadium upkeep in conjunction with the state "through the mechanism" of the new state district.
If the team owner were to decide to leave the stadium at any point, they would have to repay the state "every dime" it spent toward the stadium, he added. That would give the state about $1 billion in equity for state uses in that scenario.
ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote this week that it appears Salt Lake City is "at the front of the line" along with Nashville, Tennessee, among MLB's expansion contenders at the moment.
Support for the bill
The team's owner would almost certainly be the Larry H. Miller Company, which announced earlier this month that it will invest at least $3.5 billion toward the Power District project and neighboring Utah State Fairpark. Steve Starks, the company's CEO, joined Wilcox in the meeting to voice his support for the bill.
A potential ballpark may be the project's crown jewel; however, Wilcox, Starks and others supportive of the effort contend that the bill would provide much-needed investments in the Utah State Fairpark and the surrounding area. These investments would begin right away and continue regardless of whether Utah snags a Major League Baseball team.
"We want to see a thriving development with or without baseball," Starks said. "This allows us to begin that process of remediation, infrastructure (and) Jordan River cleanup. ... All of this is intended to help us be the most prepared market for baseball. That was the winning formula for the Olympics."
That could allow efforts to address environmental and safety concerns along the Jordan River, potentially speeding up efforts to reduce crime and homelessness. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said it could also boost ongoing efforts to undo historic redlining and other practices that intentionally neglected some of the city's neighborhoods decades ago.
"If this project can happen, it will be the most phenomenal, transformational investment the west side has ever seen," she said. "The west side of Salt Lake City deserves this."
A majority of the people who attended Friday's meeting were supportive of the bill for all of these reasons. Malah Armstrong, vice president of research and policy, added the group is well aware that public financing is probably "unavoidable" for a project like this. The group is supportive of the bill because it believes most of the tax impact will be incurred by people directly using the district.
Arguments against the bill
But a handful of people weren't as enthusiastic about the bill.
Multiple representatives of the hotel industry from across the state spoke in opposition to the bill or at least brought up concerns they have with it. Jordan Garn, executive director of the Utah Hotel and Lodging Association, said he believes the hotel community would support MLB in Utah; however, the industry is concerned with statewide increases to the transient room tax people pay for staying at hotels.
"Hotels share a disproportionate share of the cost without a disproportionate share of the benefit," he said.
Others within the industry suggested that perhaps the increases should be confined to areas closer to the district that are more likely to benefit from the stadium or to expand the tax changes to include more sectors, so the industry isn't singled out.
Salt Lake City leaders and residents also called on lawmakers to include west-side resident representation on the district's board. Gaud Maragani, leader of the Utah Gay-Straight Coalition, said the organization opposes the bill because it argues the bill subsidizes a wealthy business that may not need the help, and that the bill was introduced in the penultimate week of the legislative session.
"It's a really significant bill and a bill like this should be introduced before the session starts to maximize public input," he said. "It just looks like the process is being rushed."
The process forward
The committee ultimately voted in favor of the bill without much of a debate, setting up a full House of Representatives vote. It's possible, if not likely, that the large bill will go through further revisions as it moves through the legislative process in the final week of the session.
The vote came a day after a Senate committee voted to advance SB272, a different bill that would set up a somewhat similar framework for a new stadium in Salt Lake City that would potentially house a National Hockey League team, as the state looks to welcome in the NHL, too.
All bills must clear the House and Senate by the end of Friday, March 1, before they can go into law.
If HB562 is passed and signed by Gov. Spencer Cox, it would go into effect on May 1.
