City’s plan for complex fizzling

Steve Guiremand

Friday, July 28, 2000 | 10:30 a.m.

Plans for Las Vegas to become a spring training site for major league baseball suffered a severe setback on Thursday when the Los Angeles Dodgers and city and county officials in Vero Beach, Fla., reached a skeleton agreement on a $19 million proposal to buy and refurbish the team's famed Dodgertown complex.

Las Vegas Stars president Don Logan, who is spearheading Las Vegas' spring training effort and who has repeatedly said landing a commitment from the Dodgers was crucial to making a six-team spring training site in Las Vegas a realistic possibility, did not return phone calls from the Sun on Thursday night.

The Vero Beach City Council voted 4-1 and the Indian River County Commission voted 3-1 to accept a memorandum of understanding with the Dodgers, which included allocating $10 million to buy part of the Dodgertown complex from the Dodgers, leasing it back to the team at the rate of $1 per year, as well as garnering $7 million in state funds for the Dodgers to use to make improvements to Dodgertown facilities. Another $2 million would be put in a special reserve fund for the club.

Although Dodgers officials didn't come out and say any deal with Las Vegas is dead, it is clear that, at the very least, Logan's proposal is on life support.

"Those were two very important votes today," Dodgers president Bob Graziano said. "We now know the structure of the deal, so we can start working out the details. The basic structure is there, but a memorandum of understanding is a relatively short document. Now we've got to go back and work out the details of the real estate deals, the lease agreements. But these votes were very significant votes in the process."

Dodgers officials have been meeting with Vero Beach and Indian River officials since Monday, making minor adjustments to the proposal.

Graziano made it clear that Las Vegas is nothing more than a fallback option for the Dodgers at this point.

"We're not actively talking (with Las Vegas) at this point, but it's still an option," Graziano said. "But I think at this point in time, what we need to be doing is focusing on getting a deal done in Vero Beach. It's not done until the documents are signed, so we need to continue to look at Las Vegas as an option. But as we get closer to getting approval and getting deals done in Vero Beach ... we need to focus our attention there."

SPRING TRAINING