Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan’s administration hopes to meet with the Jaguars to formally discuss stadium renovations by the end of next month.
When that happens, the Jacksonville City Council plans to have a representative at the table.
The council wants to make sure all of its ducks are in a row and avoid a repeat of the Lot J negotiations, in which council members say they were not represented.
That’s why they are hiring their own consultant to advise them during stadium renovation negotiations with the team.
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The council approved legislation to set aside $150,000 to hire Michael Huyghue and Associates, a Jacksonville-based sports business law and consulting firm. Huyghue has close ties with the Jaguars after spending eight years as the senior vice president of team operations.
Huyghue said it will benefit the city to have someone negotiating who knows the intricacies of the NFL.
“One more example is in the Chargers’ stadium deal, legal fees ran up over $750 million that the owner of the team was required to pay,” Huyghue said. “But the NFL paid the bulk of those fees. Like rebate, when you buy a car, there are a lot of those availabilities that the NFL would pick up that this group would have no ability to understand where those resources are.”
Huyghue said that’s not all he would bring to the negotiating table.
“That is one of just a number of things that I think I will bring to this body to understand how you can put yourself in a position of not having to write an open check with an inflated process that often does not stay on budget,” he said.
Jacksonville’s chief financial officer, Mike Weinstein, said he wants to get this process going quickly and presented a tentative timeline to city council last night, including the city’s new consultant being under contract within the next week or two.
“My plan is to have, sometime probably in August, the opportunity to bring a law firm representative here in front of council on a Tuesday night, introduce the firm to you, the expertise of the firm to give you a comfort level and then I anticipate as time goes on to come in front of the council on a Tuesday night to update you on where we are in the process,” Weinstein said.
The price tag on the Jaguars’ “stadium of the future” is expected to be at least $1.2 billion, and the Jags want the city to pay half.
The team says the project is a necessity, releasing a report just last week that shows problems it says the current stadium is dealing with, including food service issues like the floor needing to be redone, power outages, plumbing, rodent trouble, and health and safety concerns.
Deegan’s team wants to have its first formal meeting with the Jaguars by the end of next month.
