Livingston Parish residents will not support additional taxes to build a multimillion-dollar minor league baseball stadium, President Mike Grimmer says. Grimmer announced in January that he was negotiating with Mandalay Baseball Properties, which owns and operates six minor league teams around the country, to move a Double-A Southern League team to the parish. Grimmer says he would still support such a move, but adds that he will no longer push for a property and/or sales tax increase to build the stadium. Voters would have had to approve the tax. “I’ve heard from the people, and they are just not receptive to any kind of millage increases right now,” Grimmer says, calling the plan “a dead issue.”
Multiple efforts to bring a minor league club to the Capital Region have failed since the 1980s, primarily because of a lack of support to build a stadium. Plans have focused on Ascension and Livingston parishes since 1992, when West Baton Rouge Parish voters rejected a property tax for a stadium. “I’m a little disappointed because we had a good opportunity to get a baseball team here. But if the people are not into approving the millage increase for a stadium, then it’s just not going to work,” Grimmer says. “We have to work for them.”—Steve Sanoski
