Camila Sosa
Within hours of the Buffalo Bills and New York state agreeing to $850M in public funding for new stadium construction, the Tennessee Titans could join the controversial list sooner rather than later.
This after the Governor of the state of Tennessee, Bill Lee, presented on Tuesday to the legislators of the state a budget to finance with $500M dollars a new building for the Titans.
The news, shared on Monday by the AP, comes after the organization revealed last month that a remodel of Nissan Stadium, the current home of the Tennessee Titans in Nashville, increased from $600 million to nearly $1.2 billion. An excessive amount taking into account that with this total a new stadium can be built.
Precisely that increase in remodeling costs and the aspirations to give a greater tourist impact to Nashville are part of the main arguments of the Governor to request these funds that will be collected through taxes.
Likewise, the Governor seems to have made it a requirement for financing that the new stadium includes some kind of roof. An indoor stadium, whether with a fixed or retractable roof, could help Nashville compete in major events in or out of sports such as the Super Bowl, the NCAA Basketball Final Four, and concerts during Tennessee’s cold winter.
A spokesman for Nashville Mayor John Cooper told Axios.com that he is committed to two goals: “He wants to keep the Tennessee Titans in Nashville for generations to come and wants to do so in a way that doesn’t divert tax money from education, affordable housing, infrastructure or other general fund obligations. We continue to study stadium options that allow us to do both.”
It is worth noting that the Tennessee government also hopes that the city can contribute a share of public funds for the new stadium, something that also happened with the Bills where Erie County announced it will contribute around $250 million dollars.
In early March, Tennessee Titans President Burke Nihill also referenced a new stadium, just as he revealed the increase in remodeling costs for the current building. “This is a very basic building in the eyes of the NFL. It’s inside 20% of the buildings built before September 11 and that’s why the safety improvements adopted by the NFL have not been added.”
Nihill estimated that reaching an agreement for the new stadium, how to pay for it and design the new building could take more than a year, while construction should take around 31 months.
