CATCH IS RENT
C’s lease at Nat expired in 2017. Team and city are still talking
Vancouver City Hall appears to have been playing hardball with the owners of Vancouver’s minor league baseball club in negotiations over the lease of Nat Bailey Stadium.
The City of Vancouver and the owners of the Vancouver Canadians both refused to answer questions about the lease when approached, citing the confidential nature of the continuing discussions.
But an audit of the Nat Bailey Stadium lease obtained through a freedom of information request shows city auditors complaining over what they called “non-compliance issues” and “deficiencies” in areas including ballpark maintenance and a lack of oversight.
That report, finished in June 2019, recommended the city hold off on a development permit sought by the Canadians’ owners, who were seeking to expand their operations at the city-owned Nat, until the two sides could negotiate terms for the third five-year term of the Canadians’ lease. That lease came up for renewal in 2017, but negotiations were still in progress this month, almost three years later.
Before a development permit is issued, the report recommended the Canadians be required to address a number of outstanding issues, including financial reporting and facility maintenance obligations. A city representative said the audit was conducted as part of the park board’s regular due diligence with its tenants.
The development permit application is connected to plans to expand the Nat’s right-field bleachers, similar to the recent expansion in left field, Canadians co-owner Jake Kerr said. Kerr said the Canadians had initially hoped to get the seating expansion done in time for the 2020 season, but that timeline won’t be possible now.
Nat Bailey Stadium has been the home to professional baseball in Vancouver’s Riley Park neighbourhood since 1951. Previously known as Capilano Stadium, the park board renamed it in honour of White Spot founder Nat Bailey, five days after his death in 1978.
During the 2000s, under the Canadians’ previous ownership, the short season single-A minor league team had been struggling, playing to dwindling crowds in an increasingly rundown Nat Bailey Stadium. In mid-2005, the park board issued an expression of interest for potential tenants of the stadium, eventually selecting a new entity called the Vancouver Professional Baseball Partnership, consisting of a pair of local businessmen, Kerr and Jeff Mooney.
Kerr and Mooney took over the Canadians in 2007, entering into a lease of five years plus four five-year renewals at the option of the park board, park board documents show, with a commitment of an initial $2.5 million capital contribution each from the city and ballpark’s new tenants to upgrade the facility.
The team’s new owners gave the facility a major renovation, and have continued to expand the park and its operations since then. The C’s popularity boomed over the years that followed, with growing crowds packing into the Nat for everything from fireworks extravaganzas to sushi races, not to mention the team’s improved on-field play, racking up four Northwest League championships between 2011 and 2017.
After the first five-year term was up for the Canadians’ new owners, the 2012 lease renewal went ahead without incident, Kerr said last week.
The third five-year term, from 2017 to 2022, seems to have been a different story.
“I don’t work at city hall, so I couldn’t begin to understand why this time it ended up in an audit report,” Kerr said. The audit “came totally out of the blue,” Kerr said, and caught the Canadians offguard when it was completed last summer.
Eight months later, the vast majority of the issues outlined in the audit report have been resolved, Kerr said, including the requested repairs, some of which he said were minor, and increased financial reporting. The city refused to answer questions about the status of the issues mentioned in last year’s audit.
The key remaining issue, Kerr said, is nailing down the rent for the city-owned historic baseball stadium.