Post by Matt on May 13, 2016 8:41:02 GMT -5
Cardinal Nation Growing!
With the recent renewed success of the St Louis Cardinals, ownership has decided to expand so more of "the Best Fans in Baseball" can attend home games in Cardinal Heaven! Cardinals GM Matt Carpenter explained “we’ve realized we have a team built to compete, hopefully year in and year out. We also realized last season that we have had too many sellouts, or close to sell outs. So what we’ve decided to do is add more seats. We’re sitting at 45,000 capacity at the moment, but we’re looking to expand it to 55,000. That’s an extra 10,000 people that can come to the stadium and enjoy the Redbirds success with us.”
Having come close to selling out so many games the past few seasons, and hopefully having another long playoff run this season and each one after, the front office decided to open up the checkbook. “We know we’ve got a window now with Gibby, Drysdale, Brock and others that will allow us to compete on a very high level. Having more fans in the park to experience our success, along with being able to see potential Hall of Famers every game, makes it more of something we need to do now,” replied Carpenter. “We’ve been in discussion with the league the past few seasons, but we could never iron out the details. Well, we finally did. Adding that many more seats will not only allow more fans to show, it will also allow the Cardinals to recover more income, which in the long run will help us expand our payroll and stay competitive.”
Now the part the people are most worried about: The cost. “We’re paying the entire bill. The fans won’t see any ticket increases (other than the normal ones that are there every year), nor will any other costs go up. The total bill will run us about $37.5 million. Final details haven’t been ironed out with the commissioner, but our front office is discussing a $10 million down payment along with any funds we might have left in our stadium building account that the league keeps for us from time to time.
That would lead to a breakdown of the following:
Total Cost: $37.5 million
Down payment: $10 million, plus whatever is in our stadium account.
Total left: Roughly 25 million.
Payment plan: Still being discussed, but we believe a 4 year repayment plan will be approved, with a rough estimate of 6-7 million paid per season.
“We really hope that the fans will be patient with us. We’re hoping for a deep playoff run again this season, but then the seats will be ready to go for the beginning of next year. We’ve got a great fan base, we’re just trying to become more accessible for people to attend games while they’re in town. Hopefully an extra 10K seats for each home game will allow that!”
