Spring Training Project Costs Could Soar in Future

While people are rightly concerned about the upfront cost of the proposed Chicago Cubs spring training facilities, future expenditures on this development could easily match the initial outlay. According to the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Cubs and the City of Mesa, the city and the baseball team share equally for any required or agreed upon capital improvements to the facilities over the life of the agreement with two exceptions. In years 10 and 20 of the agreement an evaluation of other spring training locations will be made. If any five other locations have an amenity or feature lacking at the Mesa project, then the Cubs can demand those features be added to their spring training facilities with the city paying the entire cost of the improvements. Since it is obvious that spring training stadiums and practice fields have come a very long way in the past 20 years, there is no reason to think this will not be true in the future. Without any lid on the amount involved, this could be easily tens of millions more dollars down the road.