JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – It’s a deal she’d rather see get done sooner than later.
That’s the sentiment from Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan regarding negotiations for the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium deal with team owner Shad Khan as negotiations enter the early stages.
Mayor Deegan said she wants the new stadium to make sense for both the city of Jacksonville and the team.
“I’d like to get this past us and move on to other issues that are important for our city,” Deegan told the Florida Times-Union.
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It’s similar to what Deegan told News4JAX last week, where she said she’s only had one meeting with the team and wants any stadium renovations to benefit both the team and downtown Jacksonville.
″I want to be a city with vision, I don’t want to be a city that doesn’t just look 1 or 5 years out, but, I want a city that looks 20, 30 years out,” Deegan said. “Not only the stadium but the economic development around it, and what it’s going to mean for the next 10, 20, 30 years and how that connects to the next piece of infrastructure downtown, those are the things that are important to me.”
Building what’s being called “The Stadium of the Future,” along with the development of the nearby area, is a massive task with a $2 billion price tag that the team said would take at least two years, but that preliminary schedule may be put in overdrive after Jaguars President Mark Lamping said the team is trying to find a way to make it so the Jaguars only play away from EverBank Stadium for one year.
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Under the current proposal for stadium renovations, work would begin in 2025. The Jaguars are considering Daytona International Speedway, Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, and the Camping World Stadium in Orlando as potential options to host the team’s home games during construction.
While in London, it’s reported that Jaguars owner Shad Khan said he hopes to get the deal to renovate the stadium by mid-2024 after meeting with Mayor Donna Deegan during the first of two games in London.
Deegan’s administration announced it’s hired a Chicago-based law firm to represent the city in future negotiations. Deegan’s office said it hopes to have an outline of where negotiations are sometime in the month of October.
A key point of negotiation is whether the City of Jacksonville will agree to pay for half of the renovation costs and where that money would come from.