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Money ready for ballpark
Full work force expected to be back by week's end, some earlier, Prim says
Billy Prim said the financing plan is “very complex.”
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Published: September 22, 2009
Updated: 09/22/2009 12:20 am
Investors, banks and developers signed off on the final legal documents for the downtown ballpark yesterday evening, closing the deal at the end of business on the deadline date set by the Winston-Salem City Council.
Stadium developer Billy Prim and City Manager Lee Garrity both said funds were in place to be transferred to an escrow account this morning.
Prim said crews would likely be back in full force by the end of the week, but said: "I think you'll see some activity on the site tomorrow."
The closing also means an end to 10 months of negotiations between Prim, the city, banks and investors. Prim said he now is working to get the ballpark built so his minor-league baseball team, the Winston-Salem Dash, can play there next spring.
"We hoped we would have had all financial agreements completed long before now," he said in a prepared statement to the council last night. "As we have said before, this is a very complex financing plan."
Prim said the closing documents numbered "hundreds" of pages and more than 50 individual agreements.
"We have been doing everything we could for the last 10 months to make this happen," Prim said. "And in this difficult financial environment, we took longer than we hoped."
The stadium is projected to cost $48.7 million, including land. Construction has been stopped for months because Prim's development companies fell behind in their payments to banks and construction workers.
The council last month set yesterday as the deadline for the financing deal to close. Council members said they were frustrated that negotiations were taking so long. The city contributed $12 million in 2007 to help build the ballpark at First Street and Peters Creek Parkway; in June the council approved another $15.7 million after Prim came to the council and said he could not finish the ballpark on his own.
Prim said in June that he hoped for construction to resume in July.
But, he said last night, the deal's complexity caused negotiations to take longer than he'd expected.
In exchange for the city's additional financial involvement, the city will own the stadium and lease it back to Prim.
The new financing for the ballpark includes a $12.7 million loan from the city that will help pay off construction work that already has been finished and help pay back part of a loan for land. The new financing also includes a $15 million loan taken out by Prim's development companies and $3.7 million from private investors. The city also advanced Prim's companies a $2 million federal grant and financed nearly $1 million in land.
Mayor Allen Joines, who has been criticized for his support of Prim and the stadium, said that he was glad the financing was in place.
"We look forward to its aggressive construction and being completed very soon," Joines said.
Prim's development companies are still bound by a 2007 agreement with the city that requires the ballpark to be built by the end of March 2010.
Construction crews have said they will need another 160 to 180 days -- roughly six months -- to finish work on the stadium. If that estimate holds true, the park would be finished on time.
Prim said he expected to meet that deadline.
"When you got all that complexity, it's just time consuming," Prim said. "But we're finished and we're happy about it."
lgraff@wsjournal.com
336-727-7279
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