Jim Lane

Interview

I was informed of spring training’s cancellation on March 12. Leading up to that moment, Scottsdale City Hall had been in conversation with the Giants about possibly moving their opening series to Scottsdale Stadium. This followed the City of San Francisco’s announcement that gatherings of no more than a thousand people could take place. The Giants had already begun communications with other teams regarding schedule changes and city-specific COVID-19 social distancing recommendations. Hosting the games in Scottsdale emerged as a reasonable alternative to not being permitted to host in San Francisco. Once MLB made its decision to cancel all spring training games, conversations about the Giants moving their games to Scottsdale became moot.

From the perspective of spring training in Arizona, the entire situation moved fairly quickly. The Cactus League Organization served as the first line of communication. Information was passed along to representatives in Scottsdale tied with the Cactus League. City Hall had representatives from the Giants managing and translating what was happening in California as well as with MLB to determine the impact on Scottsdale.

With the Arizona governor’s stay-at-home order, we are living through unprecedented times. COVID-19 has effectively put all baseball operations in Scottsdale on hold, including Triple-A.

Scottsdale’s fields play host to groups beyond spring training. Since the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommended to cancel gatherings of 50 or more people for at least eight weeks, there is an immense amount of uncertainty. We are also unsure of efforts necessary to slow transmission person-to-person and to avoid a peak demand that would overtax the healthcare system. We hope these measures have their desired effects so that after the peak we get to the point where we bring the city, state, and country back to economic life.

This entire situation can be fairly isolating for our population, so we have decided to keep our parks open, with limited interaction according to physical distancing, we believe it is necessary for people to go outside. We have the kind of environment that makes it the perfect time of year in Arizona to get outside.

There are many aspects of this crisis that will affect the speed of recovery. One of the biggest factors will be the number of businesses that survive challenges associated with the shutdown. For local businesses, there is a lot of personal capital that is wrapped up [in businesses that are shuttered]. As for the citizens of Scottsdale, thousands have lost their jobs overnight, [job losses] will worsen due to the restrictions on travel and the operations of non-essential businesses. We are making all reasonable accommodations given physical distancing. The uncertainty of the situation is quite difficult on people as we continue to work through this.

Moving forward, our mode of operation is to survive this shutdown period. We want to make sure that the funds that have been made available by the government are getting to the right businesses and to the individuals, so that they can survive to work another day. Our priorities are essential functions like water supply and safety. Then we can discuss ideas for boosting tourism after this is over. We will absolutely consider the consequential effects of rules we put into place to protect our community, while trying to slow down the spread of COVID-19.
I would love for MLB to come back and start playing ball. For nearly 30 years, it has been a very good partner. I may be biased, but I believe Scottsdale is one of the premier locations for a spring training team.