Biloxi welcoming its own baseball team! This nine-year Biloxi project of bringing a team to the Coast will be capped with a yet-named minor league team being housed in a projected stadium built especially for this purpose. According to The Mississippi Link (www.mississippilink.com), “Renderings depict a stadium on the north side of U.S. 90, where Interstate 110 ends at the beach. The 14.5-acre site is currently a parking lot used by employees of the Beau Rivage Casino, owned by MGM Resorts International. The company would lease the land to Biloxi for 20 years at no cost, with options for extensions. Planners envision a stadium with 6,500 to 7,000 seats for baseball, including luxury boxes. It might hold more than 14,000 people for a concert. The plan includes a three-story parking garage facing U.S. 90 and an elevated walkway over the highway. A second phase would include a hotel along the third base line as well as a restaurant” (http://themississippilink.com/2013/06/04/miss-to-give-15m-for-biloxi-minor-league-stadium/).
The $15 million in BP funds, which will not be available until a team is purchased, will be complemented with Biloxi’s plans to issue bonds for the rest of the $21 million necessary to build the team’s complex.
“Caillavet Stadium, which would be built at the intersection of Interstate 110 and US 90, is expected to bring in over $10 million dollars a year from visitors to the Mississippi Gulf Coast according to the Gulf Coast Business Council,” reported Stadium Journey (http://www.stadiumjourney.com/news/06-02-2013/364/baseball-return-to-biloxi-mississippi).
There are whispers that the team coming to Biloxi may be the Huntsville (Ala.) Stars or the Jackson (Tenn.) Generals, but there has been no confirmation on that yet. We will keep you posted.
See the artist’s rendering of the proposed baseball complex.
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