The City of Memphis hopes to sign a new long-term lease agreement with the Grizzlies by the end of the summer, Memphis Mayor Paul Young told The Commercial Appeal on Wednesday.
“We’re working toward getting to an agreement on the principals that go in a lease by the end of the summer,” Young said.
A new lease agreement would almost certainly include finalized plans for a $550 million renovation of FedExForum, where the Grizzlies play their home games. Young and his predecessor, Jim Strickland, have been working on funding those renovations and securing the Grizzlies’ long-term future in Memphis for years.
The Grizzlies declined to comment.
Young said he’s confident the city has secured the necessary $550 million to fund the renovations. Young told Memphis City Council last week that he’ll ask them to raise the city hotel/motel tax by 0.5 percent, which he said would generate enough money to fund the project. Other funding could come from an increase to the Shelby County hotel-motel tax after the state legislature OK’d a bill last year that will allow the county to increase it.
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The city has $230 million in state money to use toward stadium funding projects in the city ($120 million was allocated to Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium renovations) and that money will go toward the FedExForum renovations.
Of that money, the council is in the process of allocating $80 million to start FedExForum renovations. But Young said that the remaining $150 million likely won’t be formally allocated until a new lease is signed.
“We would want to have a lease agreed upon before we release the remaining amount and put that toward the project,” Young said.
The Grizzlies’ current lease runs through 2029. Young said he didn’t have specifics on what the new lease could look like, but state officials have said the Grizzlies could sign a 20-year lease when the deal is done. Any new lease agreement would ensure the Grizzlies remain in Memphis long-term.
Young said he’s confident the deal will get done.
“Getting the dollar amount was certainly the first hurdle that we wanted to overcome, making sure that we have all of the dollars to actually execute the project,” he said. “Then it was a matter of really working through what the lease is actually going to look like and what the terms are going to look like and our attorneys are continuing to work hard at getting all of those parameters in place.”
Part of the discussion between the city and the Grizzlies — who have not publicly commented on the negotiations or said how much money they’re seeking — revolves around continued investment in downtown Memphis.
“We also wanted to continue to make downtown stronger,” Young said. “That is something that we’ve talked about — not just with the Grizzlies, but with many stakeholders in downtown. And thankfully we’ve seen a safer downtown over the past year and we want to continue to make it safer and more vibrant.”
