Gwinnett stadium eats money

The cost of bringing baseball to financially strapped Gwinnett County is going up —- way up.

What the county initially said would be a $40 million project will now cost $59 million, project officials revealed Friday. That’s a nearly 50 percent increase over the initial price.

“While it appears somewhat shocking, I guess, how big the increase is, it is not shocking to us,” said Richard Tucker, chairman of the Gwinnett Convention and Visitors Bureau board. The tourism agency is spearheading the project for the county and will ask county commissioners for the additional $19 million on Tuesday.

The county initially planned to contribute $12 million toward the land buy and construction costs. The county also created a new car rental tax to help pay off bonds sold to pay for the stadium. The rest of the bonds are to be repaid from stadium revenues and naming rights.

Tucker said officials working on the project have long known it would cost more. In fact, many of the design elements that are part of the higher cost have been publicly circulated since the project’s June groundbreaking.

But it was not until last week, when final bids came in, that the exact scope of the increase was apparent, said Preston Williams, the GCVB’s general manager.

County officials are proposing to pay for the increased costs with $19 million drawn from the county’s reserve fund, said County Administrator Jock Connell.

If the proposal is approved, the county will have contributed $31 million in property tax funds to buy land for the stadium and help pay for construction costs.

That’s more than two-thirds of the original cost of a project that Connell said at the time was expected to “pay for itself from Day One.”

Commissioner Bert Nasuti, who came up with the idea of attracting a minor-league team to the county in 2006, said the increased cost is unpleasant, but will bear dividends in the end.

“In the long term, it’s going to generate a lot more money for the county than it’s ever going to cost,” he said.

Still, the price bump comes at a time when county officials are trying to cut costs to deal with millions of dollars in unexpected operating costs.

In recent weeks, the county tax commissioner’s office went to a four-day work week to save on energy costs, the county imposed a hiring freeze for non-emergency workers and public safety employees were asked to try to curtail their use of gasoline by handling some routine police calls over the phone, shut cruisers off for at least 30 minutes per shift and fuel firetrucks on the way back from calls instead of making a special trip.

More cost-cutting could be on the way this fall as county leaders work their way through the 2009 budget.

County officials say reaction to the stadium project has been overwhelmingly positive, and no organized opposition has emerged to the project or the county’s funding. Nevertheless, posters at ajc.com and county-oriented Web forums mostly decried the increase as unwarranted.

Kennesaw State University sports economist J.C. Bradbury, who has been critical of the county’s handling of the project, said cost increases are almost guaranteed in stadium projects, particularly publicly funded ones.

“Often times in order to seek political support you go out and fudge on the front side of it,” he said.

Tucker said the design changes leading to the increased costs came about as a result of discussions with project managers, experts and consultations with officials from other stadiums. Because of the tight timeline imposed under the county’s agreement with the Braves —- the stadium must be done by April —- architects were designing parts of the stadium even as work was under way at the site.

Commission Chairman Charles Bannister said he believed the funding was appropriate based on the track record of Williams and Tucker, both of whom were involved in building the Gwinnett Arena, widely regarded as a success for the county.

“Anything that Gwinnett County does, we always want it to be better than the best,” Bannister said.

None of the other commissioners returned repeated telephone calls left on their cell and office numbers.

The expenditure would leave the county’s reserve fund at $107 million at the end of this year, assuming no other unexpected spending, Connell said.

Despite warning that the county will have to cut costs or raise taxes in coming years to account for slowing revenue growth, Connell said he would recommend that commissioners approve the spending.

“I think we have no other practical option but to do this,” he said.

If the county rejects the funding, work at the site would likely have to stop and wait for further guidance from the county about what to do, Tucker said.

He said the project managers wouldn’t be able to revise the project’s cost downward enough to build on what’s already come out of the ground without the $19 million increase.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

WHAT $19 MILLION BUYS

Here’s what county officials say goes into the increased cost:

> $7.5 million to extend the concourse all the way around the stadium, put a canopy over part of the stadium and upgrade finishes

> $1.5 million to allow for the use of highly treated wastewater to irrigate fields and flush toilets, saving 5 million to 7 million gallons of drinking water a year

> $6.8 million to put the stadium’s storm water detention pond underground, remove unexpected rock, beef up retaining walls to maximize use of the site and increase the size of sewer pipes to deal with a longer-than-expected run to hook up with county facilities

> $1 million to account for increased material costs

> $2.2 million in management fees and other costs that are charged as a percentage of the overall contract

UPDATE

THE STORY SO FAR

> Previously: The Gwinnett County Commission in January simultaneously unveiled a plan to build a new stadium on Ga. 20 in Lawrenceville and an agreement with the Atlanta Braves to relocate the team’s top minor-league affiliate from Richmond, Va.

> The latest: County officials reveal the stadium, initially projected to cost $40 million, will now cost $59 million.

> What’s next: The County Commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday on withdrawing $19 million from its reserve fund to pay for the overage.