Arizona exodus? Diamondbacks raise concerns about future in state

Apparently, the Arizona Coyotes aren’t the only professional sports team with questions about their future in the Grand Canyon State.

Arizona Diamondbacks managing general partner Ken Kendrick expressed frustration Monday that the MLB team hasn’t been able to reach a deal to secure public funds to renovate Chase Field.

The reigning National League champs have played in the same facility since starting play in 1998. They figure renovations will cost somewhere from $400-500 million.

The club says it will contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to the project, but also is looking for some help.

“There is likely to be, in time, an expansion of our sport to a couple of additional cities. Cities are letting MLB know their interest, their interest in getting a team is specific. They would be happy with a brand new franchise, but they would certainly be very happy, you know, with, frankly, a successful, existing franchise,” Kendrick said Monday, per CBS Sports.

“It’s not where we are spending time or energy. We may run out of time in Phoenix. We hope that won’t happen. We’re hard at it; we’re continuing to have meetings. We’ve ramped up the dialogue in every way that we know how and we’ll continue to do that.”

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Kendrick stressed he is not trying to threaten government officials.

But he pointed to other markets that have reached deals with their local politicians.

Per the Arizona Republic, Kendrick referred to Baltimore, Cleveland and Milwaukee as cities that “frankly, are not as economically vibrant as our city is, our community is.” He said those cities have made agreements to upgrade their facilities.

“We’re, frankly, disappointed we haven’t been able to do it,” Kendrick said. “We’re going to keep working. We’re not ever going to stop working to get this problem taken care of. But it’s taken longer and it’s not been as easy to get done as we would have hoped. We would have liked to have been standing here today having reached a plan, being able to announce it perhaps before now and to have had you all know what our intentions are going forward. But right now, we can’t give you a plan on what we’re going to do because we don’t have an agreement.”

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