Forner Fresno City Council Member Garry Bredefeld, who supported building the downtown stadium, says the Fresno Grizzlies should not have their rent reduced. In a commentary in today's Fresno Bee, Bredefeld says the owners of the Grizzlies need to improve their business model and the city can help. But he opposes a rent reduction.
Click here to read Bredefeld's commentary.
Bredefeld was responding to a commentary from former Council Member Jerry Duncan, who supports a rent reduction. Click here to read the Oct. 21 commentary by Duncan.
What a croc! The ownership group of the Grizzlies should be run out of town for asking for a public handout in these hard economic times. I say they should get a handle on what keeps people out of the stadium and spending money rather than asking for a bailout using public funds. The Mayor needs to put a stop to this and tell the Grizzlies to live with the contract.
I have a feelng that the good old boy network will intervene and give the team exactly what it wants at taxpayer expense and when that happens, there should be recall paperwork circulated for everyone who votes for it including the Mayor!
Read Bredefeld's piece. What a pile of ....!
The operation of the ball park is another example of incompetence at Fresno City Hall. For example, city staff was supposed to market the park, to attract events when the Grizzlies weren't playing. The biggest events they've attracted are: SudzInTheCity (which ended in a riot a few years ago with one person losing an eye), an outdoor concert that fizzled, and high school football and soccer.
As for the Grizzlies' contract, based upon what I've been read/told, Minor League Baseball, not the City, holds the winning hand. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the baseball league has told the city they won't approve the City taking the team over and operating it, and they won't approve a sale that moves the team from Fresno.
If the City follows the advice of Bredefeld and Patterson, it may yet seize defeat from the jaws of victory, and wind up with an large, empty baseball field that no one uses.
They say when the facts are on your side, pound the facts – if not, pound the table. This is what former Fresno City Councilman Garry Bredefeld is doing when he writes, "The bailouts on every level of government must stop."
He wants us to believe that allowing the Grizzlies to fail, no matter how onerous the stadium lease or catastrophic the impact on our community, is somehow a righteous act of the free-market system.
Baloney.
The current Grizzlies owners made the same mistake as their predecessors by agreeing to a lease nearly three times that of any other team in the league. The burden of this lease is what drove the first ownership group out of business. And it is about to do the same to the second group of owners, unless they can renegotiate a number that is in line with their income and industry standards.
Professional baseball attracts a half million people a year to downtown Fresno. It’s a tremendous asset to our community, a cornerstone to redevelopment and a major contributor to our image regionally, nationally and maybe most important, locally.
However this issue goes, so goes Fresno.
The problem with giving the team a break on the rent is that it will come at taxpayer expense which in this day and age is not going to fly with anyone who pays taxes.
I go to about 20 games a year and the ownership group should focus on ways to get people to go to the games during the year and people into the stadium for other events during the fall and winter. Increase attendance for every game from 20% to 45% or 50% and the rent payment, while high, would become more manageable and if the team could cancel the ridiculous concessions contract with Ovations and gain control of the concession profit so much the better!
This is not the time for the team to be asking for a public handout and while I am a Grizzlies and Giants fan I cannot support giving the ownership a break.
Reading the interesting posts, one might conclude that professional baseball is a munipical necessity that should be tax supported. But not with my money. I thought the general idea is to stay away from creeping socialism. But since the baseball devotees seem to gravitate toward socialism; why not a tax supported Fresno ballet troupe? I can hear the howling of protests that are loud enough to tumble walls. Maybe the one with the controversial mural?
Isabell...I agree but I might feel differently if everything government touched turned to gold instead of do-do.