The Jaguars would leave Jacksonville without public funding for a major stadium redevelopment, President Mark Lamping said Wednesday. It’s the team's most direct messaging yet about the stakes of the ongoing political debate in north Florida over a pending $2 billion plan to renovate EverBank Stadium and improve its surroundings, in which taxpayers would kick in $1 billion.
“If there’s a referendum, the ballot question should be: Do you want to keep the NFL in Jacksonville?” Lamping said onstage at the AXS DRIVE conference in St. Louis. To be clear, the plan doesn’t require a ballot measure -- the question from SBJ’s Terry Lefton was hypothetical -- but there’s reason to think this messaging makes political sense as negotiations with the city continue.
A recent University of North Florida poll found that just 6% of Jacksonville residents were in favor of the government paying for half the project when first asked. But that number soared to 46% if that's the only way to ensure the team stays, pollsters found. Just 15% percent said it “wasn’t important” for Jacksonville to have a team, with 49% saying it was "very important."
Built in 1995, EverBank is among the oldest un-renovated venues in the NFL, and the Jags have said a major overhaul is necessary to remain “sustainable” in the league’s fourth-smallest media market. The team’s plans include creating shade for most of the seats, which are uncomfortably hot during the day in late summer months, creating far more premium seating to sell to rich customers, and to improve the stadium’s downtown surroundings.
All are necessary for the Jags to keep pace with the rest of the NFL while staying in a small market, Lamping said. “One thing we can’t do, recognizing that Jacksonville is not going to become a top quartile economy in the NFL, is that we can’t put the team, our fans or even the community in a position where we come up with a stadium solution that doesn’t put us on a path to being able to compete with the average NFL team,” Lamping said.
Lamping, who was in marketing for Anheuser-Busch when the Cardinals moved from St. Louis to Phoenix in 1988 and helped build MetLife Stadium outside NYC, struck a note of optimism, saying all sides in ongoing city negotiations want the project to happen. “Look, if Jacksonville loses an NFL team, they’re never going to get another one,” he said. “And if the Jaguars have to relocate from Jacksonville, those of us that went down there would have failed. OK? And none of us want to face that.”
