Reports have surfaced that a “closed door” meeting was held on Friday in which all parties were to finalize everything on the mud bowel, I mean Stadium. At a reported meeting held at Womble Carlyle the final touches were put in place for what is now a $48.7 million dollar stadium project. If all parties agree and the banks sign off the city will be ready to announce on Monday the deal is done and construction will resume.

Of course we don’t know who was at this meeting, who the investors are and what deals are being struck as the Mayor has kept all these meeting closed and private. This is very likely a violation of North Caroline Sunshine Laws which are there to protect the openness of Government. There are exceptions to when a meeting may be closed to the public however considering this is a known transaction and there are no secrets as to the design plans and property assessments it would be this layman’s call that there is no legal right to be holding these meetings behind closed doors. Even if they are refusing to admit the public or the press the law is still very clear that the minutes of such a meeting must be kept and I have personally requested the Winston-Salem Journal to step up and do what’s right for the public and make a request for those minutes. Granted any citizen could make such a request but I think we all know how far the average citizen would get compared to The Journal or one of the local stations. If anyone has a direct line to one of the local stations I urge you to make the same request to them.

What we do know is the deal involves at least four banks and dozens of private investors who have put in at least $50,000.00 each. What we don’t know is who those investors are and what terms they are getting. We know the city has taken out at least another $12.7 million loan but we don’t know what guarantees the city has on ever collecting on their investment. We also know that Prim and Filipowski were the original partners but due to a falling out and messy divorce we don’t know any of the terms or agreements in place between the former partners or Veronica Filipowski. Basically the public has been kept completely in the dark on a deal which is using public money, public tax incentives, public federal money, and so on and so on. Are you seeing a trend here?

Your “public” Government at work.

In this day and age it amazes me how often people forget that once you put something online it’s out there for life.

In what has become another Government Bailout of private companies the Stadium Review Committee approved a payment of $6.7 million dollars to contractors for work completed on the downtown stadium. What should be a huge red flag however is the city still has no contracts or loans signed and closed which would put the ownership of the stadium into the cities hands from what I understand.

In looking over some of the numbers touted by the Mayor and baseball team owner Billy Prim I think I may need to go back to school to learn exactly how they came up with the numbers they say will pay off the stadium’s $40 MILLION DOLLAR price tag.

According to the parties involved they will be able to pay off the stadium loans, which Winston-Salem signed for, in 25 years based on an average attendance of 300,000 per season. Now where this goes south pretty fast is just how does Prim think he is going to get those 4,300 fans per game when on average they have less than 700 showing up to see the Dash so far this year? Even if you discount the lack of enthusiasm for their current ballpark last year’s average game attendance was a mere 2,500.  Just where does Prim and Mayor Joines think they are going to get another 1,800 bodies to fill those seats? Of course the city officials touted Greensboro as an example of projected numbers and sales however I think we all know Greensboro is a totally different market than Winston-Salem.

According to The Biz of Baseball out of 82 teams in Class A Baseball only 16 teams drew an average 4,286 fans. The yearly growth in attendance at the former Warthogs games was around 135 fans, roughly 5.5% growth, yet now with a new stadium they expect to see that growth rate jump some 70%? Of course that number is based on the 2008 attendance not the current average of less than 350 fans showing up in 2009.

Oh and by the way this new stadium with a price tag of $40.1 MILLION DOLLARS is the most expensive Class A stadium built, more than $6 million over the second most expensive stadium and on par with Triple A teams like Columbus which on average seat 10,000 fans, almost double what the Winston-Salem Bailout Stadium will seat!

So look out North Carolina our “fuzzy math” Mayor has just been appointed Chairman of the State Economic Advisory Board which advises the NC Department of Commerce on such things as Tax Incentives for businesses and I think we all see how well that has worked.

Sources: Journal Now, The Biz of Baseball, and The American Chronicle

Wednesday night the Winston-Salem City Council approved another $12.7 million in tax payer dollars to pay for the privately held baseball stadium and surrounding land. After months of no construction at the site due to “negotiations” between Billy Prim and “Flip” Filipowski it was becoming obvious that the problems were not just “negotiations”. As previously posted here the city is already on the hook for an initial $12 million so this brings the total amount taxpayers are dishing out for a baseball stadium to 24.7 MILLION DOLLARS! The interest alone that the city council has put on the local tax payers is $800,000 a year.

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First off the Developers of the stadium are Sports Menagerie Corp co-owned by Billy Prim and Andrew Filipowski. From reports posted in the local media it is my understanding that the City/County agreed to forward some $12 million to the development of the stadium to be repaid over 25 years. Sometime around November of 2008 Andrew Filipowski was in talks with Prim to be bought out. Reports show that Filipowski has had loans called due of $4 million from Southern Community Bank while BB&T called a $4 million line of credit and per The Journal J.P. Morgan filed suit for Filipowski’s failure to repay $7 million due in May of 2008.