The financing deal for the baseball stadium in downtown Winston-Salem inched closer to completion yesterday, with a group of private investors meeting with developer Billy Prim to finish the details.
Mayor Allen Joines and City Manager Lee Garrity said that the deal was near closing. Joines said he is hopeful that it will close by Monday, a deadline set by the Winston-Salem City Council.
Garrity said he thinks that the issues with the private investors were resolved at the meeting.
"I don't want to say it's closed till it's closed," he said.
Council members have not said what they will do if Prim misses the deadline.
Earlier this summer, the council approved an additional $15.7 million to help get the ballpark built, with the city borrowing $12.7 million of that. Prim and his development companies are taking out another $15 million loan to finish the stadium, which will become the home of Prim's minor league team, the Winston-Salem Dash. Private investors are contributing $5.7 million.
The council could pull back the city's money if the deal has not closed by Monday.
City officials said earlier this week that the city's part of the deal is finished and ready to go to closing. They said that the deal had not closed yet because of negotiations with the private investors.
Yesterday, some of those investors met at the offices of the Bell, Davis & Pitt law firm.
Ralph Womble, the chairman of the Millennium Fund, which contributed $1.3 million initially to help build the stadium, said he thinks that the deal will close by Monday.
"The reason it's taken so long is you've got so many disparate groups in there -- you've got banks, and then you've got the city, the county, Billy Prim and his group, and then the private investors," Womble said. "It's a dance. And it's not secretive so much as it's between individual private investors negotiating for their clients."
If the deal closes, the city's loan money will go directly to contractors to pay for work that already has been completed. No city loan dollars will be filtered through Prim or his company.
Contractors are owed about $10 million for work that has already been done.
The stadium, which is being built at Peters Creek Parkway and First Street, is projected to cost $48.7 million, including land. Earlier this year, Prim's development companies fell behind in their payments to both the bank that lent money for the land on which the stadium is being built and to the construction companies that are building the ballpark. When that happened, construction at the site stopped.
Prim asked the city for additional financial help, saying that he could not finish the ballpark on his own. In 2007, when Prim first announced plans to build the ballpark, the city contributed $12 million to help pay for construction.
Contractors have said that they need another 160 to 180 days to complete the ballpark. According to the terms of the 2007 agreement between Prim's development companies and the city, the stadium must be finished by March 31, 2010.
lgraff@wsjournal.com
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