COMMENTARY | The newly unveiled $1.4 billion agreement to renovate EverBank Stadium — of which Jacksonville taxpayers would finance about $775 million, or 55 percent of the total cost — reflects a number of goals: a desire to keep City Hall meaningfully below crossing the billion-dollar threshold in investment, which a previous proposal indicated was possible; a desire to help the Eastside, the long-dispossessed historic neighborhood around the sports complex; a desire to finally put a damn cover over the sunbaked stadium; a desire to jumpstart downtown revitalization. And, of course, a desire to keep the Jacksonville Jaguars here for the long term.
How well this deal might accomplish some of those goals and at what cost may well define Mayor Donna Deegan's tenure in office, however long she's there, and would heavily influence what else this ambitious chief executive can get done. The stadium agreement — which is really a massive, complex series of smaller agreements — is certainly clever. It wouldn't cost as much as many had expected, defanging up front some of the anticipated criticism over the size of the public investment. Its proposed financing mechanism, which is, on paper, a pretty bloodless shifting around of debt and tax revenue, won't generate much opposition on council. The Jaguars would cover cost overruns, which is fair because the team designed the renovations and the design is what drives the cost.
And the Jaguars have, after some past mistakes, refined their public pitch.
It's tempting to believe the deal reflects, to some degree, a tacit acknowledgement from the Jaguars that public sentiment is more complicated than NFL boosters will sometimes admit, and that the city has meaningful political and financial limits: $775 million, even if it's less than the near-$1 billion spelled out in a previous proposal, is incredibly generous support from its host city. It's an amount that will meaningfully sap the city's financial capacity, no matter how clever a plan Deegan's chief negotiator, Mike Weinstein, came up with to cover the obligation.
It's true the public investment is smaller than recent deals for the Buffalo Bills and Tennessee Titans, but Florida doesn't help finance stadium deals, leaving Jacksonville alone in footing the bill. It would be one of the most expensive infrastructure projects in the city's history.
Still, it will be difficult for council members to oppose this deal. Some form of it will almost certainly pass.
The most vulnerable facet of the deal is what's called the "community benefits agreement," in which an NFL team pledges a certain amount of money each year for neighborhood or civic investment over the life of the stadium lease. In this case, the Jaguars have pledged $150 million over the proposed 30-year lease to be used on a combination of investments intended to help the Eastside and neighborhoods throughout Duval County. The rub is that the city has pledged to match that $150 million, intending to deploy it much faster — over about the next five years. Most of that money would be put to the same use, but $70 million would be used to fund all the proposed downtown riverfront parks projects and converting the flex field adjacent to the stadium into a community space.
The community benefits agreement was Deegan's passion in this overall deal. It's also the one area in which there has already been some grumbling from council members about the city's matching portion — which is the most tangible way the community might directly benefit from the stadium agreement.
An exhausting debate
Yes, Jaguars owner Shad Khan did just get a garish new " superyacht ," and no, he hasn't always been present for Jacksonville in the ways we had hoped. Yes, using tax money to prop up teams owned by billionaires is not ideal, and no, neither pro teams nor their facilities have the kind of profound economic impact on host cities often claimed. Yes, this economist and that one and that one said this is a bad idea.
Also: Some form of this deal is happening, its philosophical fairness notwithstanding. Most advocates of stadium renovations understand these counterarguments and simply don't care, or, likely, they believe there are intangible benefits either not considered or discounted by economists and fiscal hawks. And there certainly is some intangible benefit. Particularly in Jacksonville, the city that nurses a perpetual inferiority complex, that is impossible to deny. This deal could have been worse, plain and simple.
But also: While it is true that, say, the recent crisis with potential public school closures in Duval County has no direct relationship to the stadium agreement — these are different pots of money controlled by different political bodies — it's nonetheless valid to feel outraged that we've organized our society in ways that allow for the two to be happening simultaneously. If that injustice is reason enough for one to oppose this kind of deal, that's fair enough. I can't argue with you.
All these things can be true at once. And this deal will still happen. Deegan can't control some of those forces.
But Deegan did run as a mayor who would make good on finally fulfilling decades-old promises to build up infrastructure in the pre-consolidation neighborhoods that were left behind as the suburbs flourished, an enormously expensive ambition. She believes fervently she will make good on that pledge even as this promise and the stadium deal exist in some tension with one another. Money is simply finite, and infrastructure is expensive. If equality were easy there'd be no inequality. This deal and its cost, and other costly burdens weighing on the city's books , will severely test Deegan's promise.
And long after this stadium deal is signed, that promise will be Deegan's most profound long-term challenge.
Nate Monroe is a metro columnist whose work regularly appears every Thursday and Sunday. Follow him on Twitter @NateMonroeTU .
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Promises, perils surround Jacksonville Jaguars EverBank Stadium deal
