by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
After some foul tips, the mayor’s office and the Jacksonville Suns have hammered out an agreement to share a vacant luxury suite — just in time for tonight’s home opener.
City Hall will share Suite 306, known as the “Naming Rights Suite,” with the team, according to a one-year agreement between Suns General Manager Peter Bragan Jr. and mayor’s Chief of Staff Scott Teagle. The two sides arrived at the agreement after batting around some different interpretations of Bragan’s lease on the City-owned Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville.
The suite is ultimately intended for the eventual sponsor that pays to put its name on the stadium. Unless SMG, the City’s sports facilities manager, finds a sponsor during the upcoming season, the team will sell the suite seats for high–demand games. The mayor’s office will use the suite on Monday or Tuesday nights, which are not as likely to sell out.
The City originally asked, through its sports facilities manager SMG, to pick up tickets for two suites and 50 season tickets. Bragan’s response made it clear he differed with SMG’s reading of the lease.
Citing a section of the lease that called for cooperation on both sides to share the suite, Bragan expressed his position in an e-mail aimed at SMG general manager Bob Downey.
Until SMG finds a sponsor acceptable to the City Council, mayor’s office and Suns, Bragan said the team would keep the rights to the suite. He then refused to turn over the mayor’s 50 tickets to Downey.
“Until your marketing people are able to sell the naming rights . . . which, to my knowledge, they aren’t even close to doing, the lease clearly states that we are entitled to sell that suite for individual games, which we have done and will continue to do.”
Teagle met with Bragan in late March to reach the agreement and pick up the mayor’s tickets. Teagle said the tickets are used by different City departments as morale boosters for their employees. The suite, he said, will mostly be used by civic and community groups along with an occasional mayoral staff outing.