City Terminates Stadium Lease with Baseball Team

The Adelanto City Council has voted to terminate the city’s stadium lease with the High Desert Mavericks baseball team.

In a unanimous vote Wednesday, the council ruled that the city’s agreement with the team regarding its use of Heritage Field at Stater Bros. Stadium violates the state constitution, which prohibits municipalities from making “gifts of public funds” to a private business, said Michael Stevens, city spokesman.

Since 2012, when the Class-A minor league team’s current lease with Adelanto began, the city has spent approximately $2 million on maintenance and other obligations associated with the stadium, Stevens said.

City officials maintain that the Mavericks – a Texas Rangers affiliate that has used the stadium as its home field since the early 1990s – should have shared in those costs and that the agreement between the two parties must be restructured.

They also noted that the team’s ownership, Main Street Baseball LLC, pays only $1 a year to lease the stadium.

Both sides are looking at several options, including terminating the lease permanently, in which case the team will have to find another place to play, or work out an agreement in which the costs in question are shared more equitably, Stevens said.

“We’re confident an agreement can be worked out and that the Mavericks will continue playing here,” Stevens said.

Ben Hemmen, the team’s general manager, echoed that sentiment. “We have a long-term contract with the city to play our home games at Heritage Field at  in Stater Bros. Stadium,” Hemmen said. “We expect to play there in 2016.”

He declined further comment.