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Gene Frenette: Jaguars stadium deal happened because nobody could afford paying price of failure
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- Gene Frenette: Jaguars stadium deal happened because nobody could afford paying price of failure
Relentless drive.
More than anything else about how the Jaguars and the city of Jacksonville moved forward Tuesday on a 30-year lease for a renovated $1.4 billion football stadium , those two words explain why it got done on a timetable palatable to both parties.
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It started with Jaguars owner Shad Khan and his most trusted lieutenant, team president Mark Lamping, prudently using their power and intense desire to find a fair solution for the team and the city.
Jaguars president Mark Lamping, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan and the city of Jacksonville's chief negotiator on the stadium deal, Mike Weinstein, met at the Jaguars Miller Electric Center Wednesday, June 26, 2024 to address the media and team personnel about the newly approved stadium renovation deal.
They got ahead of the game early, taking the initiative back in 2016 to start the process of hiring people with architectural expertise to do engineering studies about the shelf life of EverBank Stadium, just to see if a renovation was doable over building a new stadium.
Khan and Lamping didn't want to wait until two or three years before the lease's expiration date, after the 2029 season, to go into two-minute offense mode on negotiating with the city.
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The Jaguars began pushing a stadium solution well ahead of schedule, which ultimately led to Jacksonville taking a major step toward the NFL franchise's long-term stay in Duu-val.
No doubt: Jaguars owner Shad Khan says stadium deal proved doubters wrong
On the flip side, it really didn't matter whether Donna Deegan, Daniel Davis or Pinocchio was sitting in the mayor's chair. Sure, it didn't hurt that Deegan is a Jacksonville native and was as intensely committed to keeping the NFL franchise here as anybody.
But suffice it to say no politician — especially one who hated the snail's pace at which previous regimes tried to develop downtown — would want to be the leader of a city administration that saw the Jaguars pack up and move.
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"Failure was not an option," Deegan told the Times-Union in a one-on-one interview. "We came in with that [mindset]. That's what I would say at every community meeting when people would say we don't want to spend this much money [on a stadium renovation].
"I say, 'OK, it's a binary choice. Do we want to spend the money or do we want to lose the Jaguars?' Then my goal from that point was to make people understand why this investment was going to be good for them. If we could make downtown fully go, and this [renovation] is a big piece of that, that would help us invest in all those neighborhoods that have been disinvested for years and years in this city.
"So, yeah, you're right, there's not a person that would have come into this [mayoral] job that would have allowed us to lose the Jaguars."
Between the top brass of both the Jaguars and the city, including lead negotiator Mike Weinstein (Deegan called him "a genius" for developing the funding mechanism) and City Council president Ron Salem, the stadium deal that passed by a 14-1 vote with four council people abstaining was almost preordained.
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This was one game in which the Jaguars and Jacksonville were too driven to lose.
Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan at the podium with Jaguars president Mark Lamping, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan, and the city of Jacksonville's chief negotiator on the stadium deal Mike Weinstein met at the Jaguars Miller Electric Center Wednesday, June 26, 2024 to address the media and team personnel about the newly approved stadium renovation deal. [Bob Self/Florida Times-Union]
Khan: 'There was no Plan B'
Unquestionably, Khan skeptics have had plenty of ammunition to question his acumen as a football owner, given the Jaguars' abysmal record (63-137, .315) on his 12-year watch.
But his resume as a businessman, which has seen him amass $12.2 billion in wealth and rank No. 162 on the Forbes 400 list, is another matter.
What Khan has done off the field over the past decade — going back to when national narratives were coming in waves about the Jaguars relocating to London, Los Angeles or fill-in-the-blank city — to stabilize his NFL franchise has been quite remarkable.
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He capitalized on the revenue streams in the United Kingdom before any owner had the vision to see it. Khan built a brand in London that is now the envy among his peers, enabling the Jaguars to accumulate more local revenue by taking one home game a year to Wembley Stadium.
He gained a branding bonus when the NFL allowed the Jaguars to be an away opponent at Tottenham Hotspur, first against the Buffalo Bills in 2023 and this year against the Chicago Bears .
Khan has gradually moved the financial needle for one of the NFL's lowest-revenue markets, to the point where relocation talk has been reduced to crickets.
And now, with the City Council passing a 30-year lease agreement that is almost certain to be approved by NFL owners in October, it's fair to say Khan the businessman has exposed the naivete of Mike Florio and assorted national media pundits on the relocation issue.
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Honestly, this agreement represents a big middle finger to them for undervaluing the resolve of Jacksonville and its fans as an NFL city.
"For me, we never even thought about [moving]," Khan told the T-U. "There was no Plan B for us here. We had to develop a fan base. International. Two out of three fans in Jacksonville still have a team from where they moved. We're the number two [team]. Those things are going to change over time with the kids."
Don't underestimate Khan's determination
Whether it was the removal of those embarrassing tarps at EverBank Stadium in his early years, the installation of a state-of-the-art videoboard in a 50-50 partnership with the city or his multiple investments in Jacksonville's development, Khan has unequivocally made it known he and the (904) are in this together.
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The city's passage on the stadium renovation is just another sign that the merger of a 73-year-old Pakistani immigrant and Jacksonville is stronger than ever.
Yet Khan, unlike the mayor, takes no pleasure in proving his critics wrong over this milestone moment.
"[Having critics] doesn't frustrate me at all because my whole life is about people doubting you," said Khan.
As a reminder, he gave a history lesson about moving to the U.S. as a teenager to attend the University of Illinois.
"If I would have kind of listened, 'Hey, you're 16, you know no one, you got no money, where are you going? What are you going to do?" said Khan. "I probably would be selling cigarettes on a street corner in Pakistan, one cigarette at a time.
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"It's really part of my, frankly, nature, makeup historically. I don't get any joy of proving people wrong. It was their opinion. ... Actions speak louder than words."
No room for misinterpretation there. If a teenager making $1.20 an hour as a dishwasher in his first job in a foreign land can grow up to become one of the richest people in the world, nobody should be underestimating his desire to forge a $1.4 billion stadium renovation.
Unlike the 1993 roller-coaster that saw original Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver pull out of being a potential buyer, then call an audible that led to Jacksonville landing the franchise three months later, there was a lot less drama before culminating in another city-wide celebration.
Sure, the Council was divided on some parts of the community benefits agreement and will have to revisit whether to approve another $94 million, but the stadium renovation was never in danger of not passing.
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That's because Khan, Lamping, Deegan, Weinstein, Salem and the City Council knew from the get-go that this was a legacy thing for them and the city.
Miss this train, thus forcing Khan to take his team elsewhere in the next few years, would leave a stain on all of them that would never go away.
A public-private merger that works
None of the power brokers were about to let the best path in decades for Jacksonville downtown development go by the wayside.
Whatever it took, everybody was going to work all the overtime necessary to get it done by Tuesday, before the Council went on summer break and Salem's term as president was ending.
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"We did not want everything paused for almost 30 days," Lamping said. "We would have lost a lot of momentum, cut into the time the league would have to review the deal.
"It would have made the process much more rushed for the NFL. If you want to get a bad result at the league, try to rush something."
Nobody has stressed the importance of a public-private partnership more than Khan, especially with Jacksonville being a small market.
But the man who is perhaps more responsible for this deal getting done within the Jaguars' time frame is Khan's business quarterback, Lamping.
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The Jaguars' president initiated the unrelenting drive to push this stadium renovation to the finish line. He tirelessly worked every room on Khan's behalf to convince taxpayers at community huddles why this deal was about more than football.
"Starting so early provided an equal level of leverage where we could work through and compromise and give and take, rather than having a hammer that if it's not done by X time, they're leaving," said Weinstein. "It made it all possible because if this started with a closing deadline, if we're here in 2027, thinking the lease was going to run out very quickly, I think we would have ended up in a very different position."
No matter how much pushback he got from people questioning the gift of taxpayer dollars to a billionaire owner, Lamping kept the focus on how this deal could be a win-win for the Jaguars and the city. Deegan, too, was a key part of a 1-2 punch at community huddles that helped bring it to the finish line.
"I felt a great deal of confidence in the Jaguars' commitment to wanting this to work," said Deegan. "That was a huge piece. But I also felt a great deal of confidence in my ability to communicate to the public."
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Lamping and Khan met with Deegan well before she won a close election for mayor to bring her up to speed on what might be coming her way. That trio, along with Weinstein, were in lockstep about not letting this massive opportunity for Jacksonville's future pass them by.
"At every turn, we were very sensitive to how the city would be positioning their agreement to taxpayers," Lamping said. "That really helped us. We had a very good sense of how far the city could go [financially]."
City councilman Matt Carlucci minced no words about Lamping's role on this deal, saying: "He's very good at what he does. They had one damn good salesman."
What's also true is the Jaguars and city officials were too much in lockstep about the importance of a stadium deal to not get it passed.
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They didn't want to go down as the only NFL city besides San Diego in the Super Bowl era to lose a team and possibly never get one back.
Jacksonville and the Jaguars got this deal completed for one simple reason: the financial consequences of failure were too monumental.
Gfrenette@jacksonville.com : (904) 359-4540; Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @genefrenette
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Double vision: Jaguars' top hierarchy planning ahead got stadium deal done
