County Commissioners Taking Serious Look at Selling Fieldcrest Cannon Stadium

BY WESLEY YOUNG
SALISBURY POST

Those county commissioners weren't kidding about possibly selling Fieldcrest Cannon stadium.

But will they get a serious offer? No one knows.

Acting on a number of items that arose during their retreat last week, Rowan County commissioners asked County Manager Tim Russell to come up with a detailed analysis of just how much money Rowan County has tied up in the Kannapolis-area ballpark, and just which way the cash is flowing.

That's not all the board did:

- Commissioners passed subdivision regulation changes that will in most cases eliminate future subdivisions with unpaved roads. That came on a 3-2 vote, with the losing side wanting to give the issue more study.

- Commissioners voted to participate with Landis in a water project that will result in the linking of the Kannapolis and Landis water systems.

- The board voted to draw up a zoning map that will give Salisbury no more than one mile of zoning control beyond the current city limits. The county will then put the city on notice that the new boundary will take effect in two years.

- It wasn't an item discussed at the retreat, but commissioners established a salary of $68,686 to offer to Leonard Wood, the county's new health director.

During the commissioners' retreat last week, a last-minute proposal emerged to sell Fieldcrest Cannon Stadium in Kannapolis. The stadium was built by Rowan County and Kannapolis over some public disapproval.

Monday, board Chairman Newton Cohen noted that while the county and Kannapolis together owe $2.6 million in stadium loan payments, the project consumed another $3 million to $4 million directly from county coffers.

Cohen said Monday that stadium supporters had promised that the project would pay back the county's money, plus interest.

But Commissioner Dave Rowland, not on the board when the baseball project was done, asserted that the stadium will never pay back the county's money. In essence, Rowland argues, the longer the county keeps the stadium, the deeper in the hole it gets.

The question being asked Monday was what price the county would be willing to accept on the stadium. The county could insist on getting back all its investment, but no one seems optimistic that anyone would give that kind of money.

On the other hand, if the county were willing to sell the stadium at half price or less, it could totally wipe out the debt and the interest payments, and make interest by investing the money.

''I wouldn't sell it for what the debt is,'' Cohen told the Post after Monday's meeting. But if someone offered $3 million to $4 million, he said, ''I would have to think about it.''

The county manager told the Post Monday afternoon that he would have no difficulty putting together a financial analysis for the stadium, but doesn't think that analysis will give the county board an asking price.

''It is not the number you would use to set the asking price,'' Russell said. ''It is what the market will provide.''

Russell compared selling the stadium to selling a car after one has put a lot of money into it: The investment doesn't necessarily raise the value of the car, since it is the market that decides what the car is worth.

If the county sells the stadium below value, Russell said, taxpayers would ''criticize us for years to come'' for the loss.

On the issue of subdivision regulation changes, Rowland and Commissioner Arnold Chamberlain voted against the measure, with commissioners Cohen, Frank Tadlock and Steve Blount voting in favor.

The changes eliminate the ''special exceptions'' category of subdivisions, under which the county has allowed small subdivisions to develop without a paved road.