AUSTIN (KXAN) — On a muggy Texas Tuesday afternoon, one where most people found refuge in air conditioning, I found myself standing in the sun near first base at Krieg Fields talking to Carlos Valdez, one of Austin’s parks workers who was painting the first base line.
Saying Valdez likes sports would be a tragic understatement. Within five minutes of knowing him, I found out he had been on the news before: he was once a professional boxer.
But before he tells you about that, he’ll tell you about his granddaughter who plays baseball (that conversation is accompanied by Facebook photos). Baseball runs in the family.
So when I told Valdez the story I was working on Tuesday — about two Austinites who were creating a commission with the end goal of bringing an MLB expansion team to Austin — Valdez was eager to share his thoughts.
“I hope we do get a team here for baseball because it’s just growing and Austin is growing,” Valdez said. “It would be good for the economy, too.”
The two men behind that movement to get a team to Austin — Derrick Fox, a tech salesman, and Matt Mackowiak, a political figure who also co-founded Save Austin Now, a PAC responsible for successfully getting Austin’s camping ban on the ballot.
Together, they’ve created the Austin Baseball Commission, which is working to get Austin on the short list of cities that should be on the MLB’s radar as the league looks to expand to 32 teams.
In our interview with them Tuesday, the two didn’t need to be prompted to talk about the challenges this endeavor could face, the most obvious being the cost and the second being locating a spot for the stadium.
“There is the financial element which is significant, it’s a $3-4 billion enterprise. There’s a need to have a suitable site for the stadium — 80-100 acres with mixed-use, with mass transit, with affordable housing in an area that works for the city,” Mackowiak said.
As for the first steps toward getting there, the commission is gathering committee members now, which will be announced in the next few weeks. Those will include leadership, investor recruitment, business, government and baseball advisory committees.
While waiting for the MLB to announce its process for expansion — which could happen over the next couple years — the group would like to have the following achieved:
- Show there is “immense” community support for a team
- Identify workable sites for a ballpark
- Recruit “a very serious and very credible, local investor group”
- Garner the backing of local and state government.
“We want to be in a substantially more advanced position in all of those areas by the end of this year,” Mackowiak said.
What does the Austin Sports Commission think?
Drew Hayes, the executive director of the Austin Sports Commission said so far there haven’t been studies done to look at what bringing an MLB team to Austin could look like, nor have there been economic impact studies.
Hayes said while the commission always wants Austin’s name to be in the mix, it would be a long and complicated process to get an MLB team to Austin.
“We are very fortunate to have Ryan Sanders Baseball and the Nolan Ryan family here to help guide any effort in Central Texas, as they have held ownership and executive roles with both the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros, and understand the process better than anyone,” said Hayes.
How much would it cost?
According to the Associated Press, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in 2021 that the MLB would consider expansion fees in the $2.2 billion range for new franchises.
“If in fact these assets are worth an average of $2.2 billion, I think that’s kind of a lodestar in terms of where you would start in terms of evaluating expansion opportunity,” Manfred said, according to AP. “Expansion is not purely additive, right, from the perspective of the existing owners. There are huge shared revenue streams that are diluted as a result of having 32 as opposed to 30 as your denominator, and if that was in fact the expansion number, and that has to be taken into account, as well.”
That doesn’t include the amount of money it would take to build a ballpark. In Texas, stadiums have taken the retractable roof approach. Arlington’s Globe Life Stadium, where the Rangers play, cost $1.2 billion, according to the MLB.
In Arlington, the city’s investment into the ballpark was capped at $500 million, which it collected through sales, hotel and car rental taxes.
Wait, the MLB is expanding?
Manfred has repeatedly said that he would like to expand the MLB from 30 to 32 teams, but said he would not consider that shift until after the Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays secured new ballparks.
With Tampa Bay on its way to getting a fully redeveloped ballpark and the Oakland Athletics shuffling their attention to Las Vegas, the conversation around a possible expansion is once again gaining traction.
According to the Associated Press, the very soonest this could all happen, “would probably be around 2028 at least.” But again, no official expansion announcement has been made.
Who else wants it?
Also according to AP, Manfred has mentioned as possible expansion candidates: Charlotte, North Carolina; Montreal; Nashville, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; and Vancouver, British Columbia. Salt Lake City has also been a vocal contender.
Fox, a numbers guy, rattled off several reasons Austin should be more attractive to the MLB than those cities, including its growing population, TV market size, proximity to San Antonio and lack of professional sports compared to other cities.
“If Austin loses because it’s a fair fight and the owners decide two other markets are better than Austin, we’ll accept that. What we’re unwilling to accept is to lose a game we don’t even try to win,” Mackowiak said.