- Spartanburg, South Bend borrows to build, refurbish stadiums
- Spartanburg sees Fifth Third Park opening for 2025 season
The new look of US minor-league baseball took a curtain-call last week as Spartanburg, South Carolina, sold bonds to build a stadium for the Hub City Spartanburgers, a Low-A level affiliate of the Texas Rangers.
Spartanburg, a city of 38,732 in the upstate region of South Carolina, sold $63.8 million in revenue bonds to build the 5,000-seat Fifth Third Park stadium, which is slated to cost $100 million and open in time for the 2025 season. The bonds are backed by a mix of rent, fees and taxes. The city and county are contributing another $59.4 million to the project.
Minor league baseball is still recovering from the lost year of 2020, when the pandemic shut down the season and Major League Baseball cut the size of the minor leagues by more than 40 teams to 120, and then told the rest to replace or upgrade their stadiums. In 2023, sales of municipal bonds for sports facilities tripled, to $1.8 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Bloomberg Industries
By Joseph Mysak Jr
June 4, 2024