Special District Meeting - February 2, 2017

This special meeting of the WVID Board of Supervisors only had 3 agenda items; 2 of them related to the ongoing, exclusive negotiations with the Atlanta Braves for moving their spring training and other operations to Sarasota County. The other item was the appointment of a new supervisor to fill the unexpired term of a supervisor that resigned last month. Both the outgoing and incoming persons were more or less selected by the master planner (its totally legal; one acre, one vote and they own an overwhelming amount of the acreage in the district).

Resolved: the district will enter into a formal pre-development financing agreement with the Braves whereby the Braves agree to reimburse the district for all expenses related to the preliminary siting, design and permitting of the proposed new stadium complex.

Resolved: Marty Black will be the district's negotiating representative for ongoing talks between the Braves, county, city, state, and district.

Before adjourning the special meeting, Mr. Black gave some additional information about the planned stadium project:

• It will include a multi-story hotel. Number of rooms not disclosed but it will be a commercial enterprise, separate from the "public" portion of the stadium complex.
• It will include 40,000 square feet of Braves sports medicine and rehabilitation services. Also a private, separate from the public portion of the stadium, business, It will employ 70 people and the Braves will use this facility for their major and minor league players from around the world.
• There will be paved, paid parking for about 700 vehicles, with adjacent, grass field parking for another 1,000 or so vehicles.
• In addition to the West Villages Parkway access to the new stadium, current plans also call for another access road that connects to US 41 as well. No mention of the alignment for that road.
• Funding for this project will come from multiple sources. Mr. Black stressed that there would be no increases to existing property owners WVID taxes. Just like any other new village added to the West Villages, only the residents (Braves team) will be responsible for repayment of any public debt for this project. That debt will be retired by using the annual lease payments paid by the Braves for using the complex (30 year lease I believe?).

Mr. Black also briefly talked about the Village D Retail/Commercial plans. He expects another 6 months or so for plan and permit approvals, and for construction to start sometime in the Fall of 2017. He said over 50% of the currently planned retail space is already taken by letters of intent from interested businesses.

A contingent from Gran Pardiso brought up the need for a pedestrian/bicyle/electric vehicle overpass to connect Villages A and B to the new Village D retail/commercial area. Mr. Black again stated that this was a village developer (Lennar or Mattemy) issue and not a district responsibility.