It’s been two years since the state attorney general filed a lawsuit demanding the city of Jackson return Smith-Wills Stadium to its control.
So far, nothing has happened.
The lawsuit is still tied up in court, but Rep. Trey Lamar (District 8-Lafayette and Tate counties), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he plans to meet with Jackson Mayor John Horhn in the coming weeks and discuss a resolution.
Lamar wants to see the property the stadium occupies redeveloped, but he did not speculate about what that might be.
The location of the property on Lakeland Drive is good, he said, with the interstate nearby as well as the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum.
The stadium is home to the Hank Aaron Sports Academy, and part of the property is subleased for overflow parking for the G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery V.A. Medical Center. Churchill’s Smoke Shoppe, which closed in 2024, was located there for 10 years.
“There’s a legal mandate for the state to take back the property because it isn’t being used as a park,” Lamar said. “That property belongs to the state of Mississippi.”
In 2024, Lamar added a provision to House Bill 1983 that directed the attorney general’s office to facilitate the transfer of the property to the state because it wasn’t being used as the deed required.
In October 2024, the city sued the state to stop it from taking back possession of the property, and Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed a counterclaim against the city in Hinds County Chancery Court.
The litigation is ongoing and the attorney general cannot provide a comment, said MaryAsa Lee, communications director for the state attorney general’s office.
Ashby Foote, who represents Ward 1 on the Jackson City Council, hopes the city and state can work things out without confrontation.
“Give us a chance,” he said. “I would prefer that they let the new administration get this thing straightened out in a way that serves the citizens.
“We were sold a bad deal by the previous city administration. We didn’t get all the facts in a timely manner so we could make an informed decision.”
In 1944, the city paid the state $50,000 for the land. The deed included the provision that the land would revert to the state if it was not used for “park purposes.”
Opened in 1975, the stadium made a name for itself as the home of the Jackson Mets, a minor league farm team for the New York Mets. After the Mets left in 1990, it became home to the Jackson Generals, followed by the Jackson Diamond Kats and the Jackson Senators.
In 2019, the city leased the aging stadium to Kusche Sports Group, LLC, formed by Tim Bennett, a former co-owner of the Biloxi Shuckers minor league baseball team and manager of MGM Park in Biloxi.
Kusche Sports Group, which operates the Hank Aaron Sports Academy, was the only entity to respond to a request for professional management services of the stadium that the city issued on Oct. 31, 2018.
When Kusche Sports Group responded to the city’s request for proposals, the city had been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain the aging stadium. For fiscal year 2018, the city planned to spend $107,157 on the stadium, up from $93,205 in 2017 and $121,000 in 2016.
At the same time, revenues for parks and recreation failed to meet city projections. In 2016, Jackson brought in just $203,967 in revenues from admissions, fees and facility rentals, about $361,000 less than that year’s projections. Revenues also were down for fiscal year 2017.
Bennett’s sublease of the stadium parking lot became news when the city council OK’d a modification to the 2019 lease agreement without knowing he was subleasing part of the parking lot.
In 2021, Bennett answered a request for proposals to provide overflow parking for the V.A. Medical Center at 1500 E. Woodrow Wilson Ave. and went through all the required permitting.
Bennett said he talked to someone at the city of Jackson about the venture, but he could not off the top of his head provide the name of the person he spoke with. “I would have to go back and look at the paperwork,” he said.
The V.A. contract required investing “six figures” to provide a shuttle service that is offered every 30 minutes Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. until 7 p.m., Bennett said. About 150-200 employees catch the shuttle at the stadium that takes them to work at the VA Medical Center, he said.
The stadium parking lot had to be repaired, two shuttle buses had to be acquired and drivers employed, bus stops had to be built, the interior of a building improved so that employees could wait there during bad weather and insurance had to be obtained, he said.
In 2019, the city council OK’d an agreement for 10 years with Kusche Sports an option to extend the contract for two 10-year periods.
The terms of the agreement called for Kusche Sports to remit to the city the greater of a base rent of $125,000 per year or 20 percent of all gross marketing revenue generated at the stadium up to not to exceed $250,000 per year beginning on Oct. 1, 2020, with successive payments made annually on Oct. 1.
The contract also called for Kusche Sports to pay the city 30 percent of all revenue on ticketed and non-ticketed sales gate events and concessions, starting on Sept. 1, 2019. The contract also requires annual audits to be presented to the city.
The council amended the contract in January 2024 after Kusche Sports said the global pandemic caused undue hardships and resulted in an inability to submit the required annual payments.
The contract was amended so that Kusche Sport’s investments in renovating the bathrooms, installing new equipment, maintaining the baseball fields and allowing local high schools and college teams to use the field as needed were accepted as partial rental payments.
According to the amended contract, based on the in-kind donations, the city reduced “the arrearage to $100,000 to be paid in quarterly installments annually, with the first payment due upon execution and each payment thereafter being due on October 1st, through October 1, 2026.”
The council approved modifications to the contract in January 2024, the leaseholder received credit for upgrades made to the stadium and a new schedule was set for payments.
When reached by phone on Jan. 28, Bennett said he is up to date on payments to the city of Jackson. He said he was out-of-the-country and could not provide more detailed information at that time.
Bennett contends he has put more than seven figures in improvements to the stadium.
“This is me personally funding this,” he said. “I made a personal commitment to fund this.”
The death of Hank Aaron, who died on Jan. 2, 2021, had an impact on the academy, Bennett said. “The financial support is not there,” he said, noting there has been no funding from Major League Baseball.
The academy has been a positive development for the city, he said, by bringing in several tournaments that have provided an economic benefit for the city. Allowing the Jackson Public Schools, which lack baseball facilities for all its high schools, and other colleges to use the stadium for free also adds value, he said.
The stadium parking lot has been used for free as a drive-through location for coronavirus vaccinations and as a site for FEMA and MEMA to take applications for storm assistance as well as a site for water distribution for Jackson residents, he said.
