By JIM McLAURIN
Staff Writer
The Capital City Bombers got a step closer Tuesday to moving their South Atlantic League team to Greenville.
"We are authorizing the city manager to sign a ‘memorandum of understanding,’ which is the first step that the league requires," Greenville Mayor Knox White said from his home Tuesday night. "Our deal is pretty straight forward. The Mauldin deal has got a lot of complications to it."
Capital City Bombers president Rich Mozingo, whose team has been based in Columbia since 1983, said Tuesday afternoon that he or any of the other members of the management group are prevented by Minor League Baseball from making public comments until a deal is finalized.
The complicating factors are:
• The Greenville Braves, a member of the Class AA Southern League who are moving to Pearl, Miss., have territorial rights over the Greenville area until their lease with the city expires.
• The nearby Upstate town of Mauldin is making a bid to move another member of the Southern League, the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx of Jackson, Tenn., to Mauldin.
• Since the Bombers are from the Class A South Atlantic League, the Double-A league would have priority when a new team comes to the Greenville area.
That is the theory. According to White, the fact is that the Bombers have agreed to build a stadium in downtown Greenville if the city donates the land, which it has agreed to do.
The Mauldin deal, he said, would the that town to put up an estimated $11 million, which Knox thinks it would be well advised to avoid.
"They (the Diamond Jaxx) probably would have made us the same deal (as with Mauldin), but it was something we could not do," White said. "It was a sizable $10 million difference that we would have had to make up, and we would not have been comfortable with it.
"(But) both Mauldin and Greenville city councils today had meetings, and both approved memorandums of understanding."
The stadium would be located downtown, within a short distance of Greenville’s River Falls Park, a district similar to Columbia’s Vista. Part of the requirements, White said, was that the team engage a local developer to create a multiple-use project.
"We insisted that the stadium be surrounded by residential condominiums, office and retail (buildings)," White said. "We didn't want the stadium to just sit there vacant during the offseason right in the middle of town, so to the outside eye, it will look like condominiums."
--So maybe Spartanburg can get the Bombers if Greenville doesnt?
