 I am so excited to go back into the bank and root for my Jaguars and with me today, we've got Mark Lamping, president of the Jaguars for a closer look at all things Jaguars. Mark, how you doing? I'm doing great. A lot of excitement around the team. It's been reflected in terms of the interest in the upcoming season and players are starting to make their way back to the training facility and football is right around the corner. All right. And you can join the conversation to call us at 549-2937 or tweet us at FCC on air. Email us at FirstCoastConnect to WJCT.org or message us on the FirstCoastConnect Facebook page. So Mark, I was telling you before we got started that I've been gone for a little bit, haven't really paid attention to football in general. Give me your best sales pitch for why this is the season to tune into the Jags. Well, you know what? I'm not the one to try to overstate things at times, but last year, particularly the second half of last year, was a real turnaround. A lot of excitement, winning the division on the last day of the season and then having such a memorable comeback at home in the first playoff game and then actually going to Kansas City and playing well. Doug Peterson's first year as head coach. He made such a difference and Trevor Lawrence is continuing to develop. When people look at NFL teams, they usually start with the quality of the head coach and the quality of the starting quarterback. And if you have those two things, you have a chance. I don't think there's any question. We have a great combination in Doug and Trevor. Yeah. And sometimes it takes a while to find that combination, right? Like you go through a lot of coaches who are great, but maybe don't fit in the system. You go through a lot of quarterbacks who are great, but maybe don't fit in the system. So finding the two that match. Yeah, you're right about that. And our fans have had a front seat view of the difficulty that the Jaguars have had in putting that combination together. We had some success in 2017, made it to the AFC championship game. Arguably should have won that game and got onto the Jaguars first Super Bowl and had at the time what we believed was a good combination, but it turned out to be just a one-year impact and then back to the drawing board the next year. Yeah. So just to fill you in on how out of the loop I am, I remember conversations about a training facility that was going to be built here and the debates that were happening in City Council and all of that stuff. And then you came in and sat down and I said to you, like, so when do you start breaking ground on the training facility? And you were like, it's done. Now it was the building's open. It's, you know, that goes back about two years when we first were talking about this. In fact, it ties to a subject that we've been spending quite a bit of time on out in the community over the course of the past few weeks. And that's the stadium of the future. And, you know, the first step in that was getting the football operations out of the stadium because you can't, you can't do anything major with the stadium if the football team is still based in there because football is a NFL football is a 365 day a year a business. So a very good partnership with the City of Jacksonville. The facility opened, the ribbon cutting was yesterday. We have players that are reporting this week and we have our first open practice coming up in, I guess, 10 days or so and publicly get a chance to come out to experience what the new facility is all about. It'll be so much more comfortable for our fans as they come watch practices. So it's a huge step and a very significant step for the franchise. Yeah, I've been to a couple practices, you know, way back in the day and they were always hot. And if I remember correctly, we were just standing at a like a gate, a chain link fence watching what was happening. So is that the same experience now or how's that changed? Now, and that unfortunately, that was a bit of the experience in the past. But now we have a new grandstand that's been built. It has a roof over it. So all the seats are shaded, which is good. They're not aluminum benches. They're fixed individual seats. We've got nine really massive fans that will create a nice breeze through the shaded area and permanent restrooms, concession stands, even a gift shop. So the experience will be totally different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you spoke about the stadium of the future. I want to get down to brass tax on that. So like, forgive me if I'm asking you to go slow as we walk through this because I'm just trying to wrap my head around. So we're talking about building a new stadium in the place of the bank that's here right now, right? With that completely like, are you starting from ground zero and demolishing or are you just taking it from what's there and like making it better? Yeah, let's, you know, go back through the process, you know, just to set the stage. The current stadium is owned by the city of Jacksonville. The city of Jacksonville has the responsibility to maintain it to pay for the capital improvements. And if there's a decision made at some point to replace the stadium, that's the basic responsibility of the city of Jacksonville. You know, we started talking about the importance of dealing with the stadium back in 2016. It's that important of an issue. And then three years ago, we began a formal process in partnership with the city to work on a solution. The first thing that we tried to do was an assessment of the current stadium with the idea that if the structural systems of the stadium are sound, then that will make it possible to be able to meet our needs through a renovation of the existing stadium versus building a new stadium. And that was an important consideration because it's significantly more expensive to build a new stadium versus renovating a stadium, you know, not to mention the sustainability advantages of reusing a lot that's already there. So we came to the conclusion that renovation was a possibility. We then distributed surveys to our customers, asked them what they wanted to see in a renovated stadium. We talked to other stakeholders like the University of Florida, the University of Georgia, the Gator Bowl. We talked to concert promoters about what improvements to the stadium would convince you to bring more and more events, major events, to downtown Jacksonville. And then once we had that, we came up with a list. It was about 24 items that we felt were really important that this new renovated stadium had to deliver. There's a lot of obvious things like shade on the seats, particularly on the east side of the stadium, wider concourses, make it easier to get from level to level. And we engaged eight sports architects from coast to coast. We gave them that list. We paid them some money. We asked them to come back in four months, which they did with their ideas on how they would renovate it. We cut that list of eight down to two. At that point in time, we engaged a construction manager to work alongside these architects so that that construction manager could confirm that what they're designing can actually be built. What would be the sequencing of that construction schedule and then what would a rough order of magnitude, estimated cost of that? We ultimately chose one architect, HOK. And then we had a plan that we released to the public I guess about six, eight weeks ago. And at that point, we then took that plan. We scheduled 16 what we call community huddles, public meetings across all of Jacksonville. We had at least one in every city council district and basically provided more information to the public. They were free to charge. A lot of them were scheduled at noon time. A lot was scheduled in the evening. We had them during the week. We had them on weekends, actually had one on a holiday. And just finished that process. We got great feedback in terms of suggestions on how to improve the plan. And in fact, we just released yesterday the summary of the findings over through that public comment period. So we're at the point now where we have a plan that is better than what it started with. And now it's a question of engaging with the city of Jacksonville to see if we can find common ground on a plan that works for the city, works for the residents, works for the Jaguars, and we'll get approved by the National Football League. And what's the price tag on that? The price tag on the renovation of the stadiums between 1.3 and 1.4 billion dollars. 1.3 and 1.4. And so how much of that would the taxpayers of Duvall County be paying? Well, ultimately, I guess it depends on the negotiations with the city. If you look at comparable markets, and that will be an important consideration for the National Football League, and you look at markets like, let's say Buffalo, let's look at Nashville that have recent agreements, those were generally in the 60% public 40% private range. What's going to happen here is ultimately going to be determined by 20 people, the mayor and then the 19 city council members. And we have a good string of experience in working with the city. The Miller Electric Center, the practice facility is the latest example of that. That practice facility is actually owned by the city of Jacksonville. The Jaguars contributed 50% of the cost of that city-owned facility. We signed a long-term lease to use that facility. And we took responsibility for overseeing the construction. And along with that, we took the responsibility if there are any cost overruns to pay those cost overruns. So that was the model we had with the Miller Electric Center, same model we had in the construction of Daley's Place in the Flexfield and also the last round of stadium improvements. So we have a track record of working with the city on constructing city-owned assets. And I'm sure that will be the basis of our negotiations once we sit down with the city. You said that you signed a long-term lease for the practice field. If the city council and the mayor approve whatever deal that you guys create, does that tie the Jacksonville Jaguars to the city longer? Is there an extension on how long the Jaguars can stay here? Absolutely. That'll be one of the key conditions of any agreement, really from both perspectives. If the city is going to invest in a new city-owned stadium, and in this particular case, they have a willing investor to join them in the case of the Jaguars, the city is going to want to make sure that they have a tenant in that stadium for a long period of time. And from our perspective, if Schott is going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into a city-owned stadium that he does not own, he's going to want to make sure that the team has the ability to play there. So we would expect there would be a long-term lease between the Jaguars and the city that would ensure Jaguars football here in Northeast Florida for generations to come. Question, the stadium would be owned by the city. The Jaguars would be the primary leaseholder. Jaguars are in season, I guess you could say, from August to January. So in the times that the Jaguars are not playing games, who gets the revenue from the use of the stadium? Well, that would be to be negotiated. And that's one of the goals of this stadium of the future plan. Number one, we want a stadium that's going to provide the greatest benefit to this community. So obviously, keeping the Jaguars here for decades to come is a positive thing. But that's only one thing. And as you rightly pointed out, that's only 10 games or so a year. For this stadium to have the maximum impact on this community, it needs to be the type of stadium that's going to attract a lot of major events here to Jacksonville during the rest of the year. For example, during the summer, that's the major concert season. There's no reason why Jacksonville shouldn't be a more active participant in those types of events. So the design of the stadium is such that it will position the stadium to be more attractive to people that are bringing events, that in fact, that's why we talk to parties like concert promoters to get feedback from them on what is the stadium missing that's keeping you from bringing more concerts here each and every year? Same thing with talking to the University of Florida, University of Georgia, Gatorball, all of those that are non-Jaguar entities but have a big stake in terms of what happens to the stadium. I'm talking to Mark Lamping, President of the Jacksonville Jaguars. You can join the conversation too at 549-2937. You can tweet us at FCC on air, FirstCoachConnectedWJCT.org, or you can find us on Facebook. And I'm going to take a caller. Mark, please keep it on topic and keep it brief. Hey, Mark. Hey, good morning. I'm not a big Jaguar fan. I've been to exactly one game in your entire... Hold on, Mark. Can you hold on one second? We're having a little bit of technical difficulties. Mark can't hear in his headphones. Hold on one second. Okay. Okay, let's see now. Can you... Yeah, we can hear now. Okay, go ahead, Mark. Please, please start over because the other, Mark, couldn't hear you. Thank you. I'm not a big Jaguar fan. I've been to two games since you guys have been here. You guys could haul off to London tomorrow and it wouldn't affect me one way or the other. But I do realize, and I think it's immoral, basically, that one of the 10 richest men on the planet wants us, the poor citizens of Jacksonville, to pay for his stadium. I know we own it, but it's your stadium. But anyway, here's... I do realize that a lot of people in Jacksonville just love their Jaguars and I resigned to the fact that you guys are going to get it built. But I want, if you're going to do that, you're basically asking the citizens of Jacksonville to be your bank. And when you go to a bank for a loan, you have to open up your books. You have to tell them what you owe and what you're getting in, you know, for revenue and all these things. And professional football teams never want to do that, which is worrisome to me, especially since, in light of a sports history, the article I read a long time ago, and Jacksonville gives the Jaguars far more money than just about every team in the league, as far as percentages of parking and tickets and all that other revenue. Mark, my friend, what's your question? So if we give you that money, would you please open up your books to the city auditor to see, you know, what you're making off of us? Thank you, Mark. Yeah, let me, well, first, I appreciate your comments. And as we've gone through our process in terms of public meetings, I certainly encourage you to make your views known to, ultimately, the people are going to decide if there are tax dollars invested in this. So that would be the mayor and the 19 city council members. So encourage you to be part of the process. And, you know, I also encourage those people that might view this differently than you to be just as involved in the process. So let me try to focus on that topic as it relates to tax dollars going into this facility. There is no question that any investment tax dollars, particularly the magnitude of dollars that are being discussed in this context, needs to receive the most extensive review from those that ultimately will determine whether the investment is going to happen or not. And that's justifiable and that absolutely should happen. But as part of that discussion, you know, you reference that the city owns the stadium, they have responsibility for the stadium. Keep in mind that there's another side to this coin. And that is, you've got a willing participant, someone who believes in downtown Jacksonville, that is prepared to invest an unprecedented amount of money in downtown Jacksonville, a billion dollars in downtown Jacksonville, be the single largest private investment in the history of Jacksonville. And when you look at the list of people that are prepared to make that type of commitment to downtown Jacksonville, it's pretty much limited to one person right now. And that's shotgun. So obviously, this will be some type of private public partnership between the two parties. What that partnership looks like will be part of a negotiation. We certainly would hope that we would get to a successful conclusion as does the city. But that remains to be seen. But at the end of the day, you know, you're looking at a huge investment in downtown Jacksonville, an investment that could be generational in terms of its impact. I think one of the things that Mark was trying to hit on, though, is that he believes, and I don't know if this is true or not, but he believes that NFL teams do not open up their books to show like how much revenue they're generating and creating and so forth and so on. And would the Jaguars or do the Jaguars have to open up their books in order for something like this to happen? No, we don't. A private company, just like other private companies, have no obligation to reveal their operations. That's why I think the decision that Mayor Deegan has made to bring in experts in the industry that can advise the city, that can provide the estimates and probably very accurate estimates as to what the operations of teams look like. I think that's a very good move. And, you know, the other thing that is out there is, you know, there's 32 NFL teams. You know, Jacksonville is not the only market that has an NFL team. And I think it's important to understand what is happening across all of those markets, particularly those markets that are similar to Jacksonville, smaller markets in the national football. Yeah, I think, you know, following the line of what Mark was saying that I agree with you that Shaq Khan is looking to invest massive amounts of money into Jacksonville. But I think that what people who are against this idea would say is that, like, if he was willing to put that much money into Jacksonville, there must be an upside that he's going to make a lot of money from it. And what does the city and the taxpayers see from that income? Well, that's a fundamental question that has to do with public policy. You know, as we sit here today, the city of Jacksonville has a economic development policy that involves private public partnerships. And it doesn't say that, you know, you should only invest with companies that are losing money. In fact, I think that'd be a pretty poor direction to go. It doesn't say that you should treat companies that are owned by wealthy people any differently than those that may not be. And, you know, let's use a great example. Let's use Amazon. You know, Amazon, when they brought their first distribution center here in the Jacksonville, the city participated in helping make that happen because they had to do it to be able to earn that. And since that time now that we have a number of distribution centers, and thousands of jobs have been brought here to Jacksonville. I don't remember any discussions about Jeff Bezos, back one of the richest people in the entire world, flies his own rockets. And his involvement with Amazon somehow would preclude a discussion, you know, to try to bring that to Jacksonville. So at the end of the day, this is going to be decided, as I said, by the mayor. It's not going to be decided by me or shot. And the 19 city council members, they're the ones that need to be accountable to the citizens. We're going to take a call. Kevin from Nakati, please keep it on topic and keep it brief. Yeah. Yes. Good morning, Mr. Lamping. I'm calling from Nakati. And I just want to say that I live in the 15% of Nakati. That's in Dubo County that nobody realizes we're here. And we sure do have enjoyed having one of your huddles down here. That aside, my question that I told the producer is, how is it the New York Islanders were able to build a 1.1 billion dollar arena next to Belmont racetrack without one penny of government money coming in was all private. Very simple. They live in the largest market in the United States. The depth of that market, the size of the economy, the number of corporate headquarters there, the average, the potential number of customers they have in that market. And that is not inconsistent. That also applies to the National Football League. If you look at stadiums that are built in big markets, the public is a very small participant in the construction of those stadiums. The other fact that is irrefutable is that when stadiums in the National Football League are built in small markets, the public is a major participant. The economies of those smaller markets pale in comparison to the economic opportunities that those teams, whether it's an NHL team or an NBA team or an NBA or Major League basketball team, the opportunities they have by being in huge markets. And we're going to take one more caller, Charlie, from the beaches. Keep it brief and keep it on topic. Hey, Charlie. Hey, guys. You guys were mentioning the construction, the building, et cetera. I wonder if you could please tell me how many plumbers, carpenters, laborers, Uber drivers, how many people will be employed in Jacksonville? Carpenters and electricians, can you tell me what benefits those industries will have and how many people will that employ? Thank you. Thank you, Charlie. Let me, that's a very timely question, in fact, had an interesting conversation yesterday with Henry Brown, who's the CEO of one of Jacksonville's great historic companies in terms of Miller Electric. And a project of this magnitude would require for just the element of work that a company like Miller Electric or another electrical contractor would be doing, would require up to 500 electricians per day to be working on that project. And in this case, it would be for a period of 30 months. So you multiply that by each of the other building trades, and there'll be thousands of people working onsite each and every day. And our focus, and I'm sure the city's focus would be to make sure that the agreement between the two parties would position local companies and make sure that wherever it's possible, that not only do we use local companies, particularly emerging companies, but that those people that are working onsite are actually live here in Jacksonville. Mark Lamping, President of the Jaguars, thank you so much for coming in. We'll be right back.