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Putting the Pieces Together

Reid reached out to Nolan to see who might be able to help bring his great idea together.

"I called my dad and said ‘Dad, I got a great idea.’  I knew that the Austin area was the largest market in the country without professional sports, so I said ‘Here’s what I want to do.”  He said: Call Jay Miller because Jay is in the minor leagues." 

Jay Miller is a veteran of the baseball biz. He was GM of the New Orleans Zephyrs at the time that the call came from Reid, but his relationship stretches back.

"I first met the Ryan family when I was with the Rangers (93-95) in Arlington," Miller recalls.

"When Nolan signed, the GM called me up and said 'I want you to be his ticket guy when he pitches'." 

Unlike some prima donna athletes, Miller found Nolan to be a pretty reasonable guy.

"Nolan told me, “When I pitch I need a lot of extra tickets.  We just became friends."

Miller jumped at the chance when Reid offered him the opportunity to work with the Ryans. He brought in veteran front office people who had both major and minor league experience.

"One guy’s got eighteen years in the majors. Three guys have got ten years in the big leagues. I’ve got twelve. We’ve got guys who worked at the highest levels of major league baseball. They’re dedicated. They love what they do. They love coming to work every day."

The foundation of that working atmosphere has been a critical component of the Express' success. "I’ve worked in college athletics, major league, AAA, AA, and a lot of different places," says AGM Dave Fendrick, "and the hardest thing we had to do, those of us who are ‘veterans in the business’ was to tell the young people that this ain’t the way it is everywhere else." 

While pretty much everyone you talk to at the Dell Diamond says that the "can-do" attitude starts at Reid's desk, he, in his unassuming way, offers another take: "We have the most dedicated group of customer service, baseball-loving, people-loving front office that I could imagine and it starts with Jay Miller.  He sets the tone for the type of dedication that we have in the office."

From the get-go, the low-key, low-prima donna attitude began the wheels of success rolling down the tracks for the Express. Baseball savvy was not going to be a problem. Reid, however, was still short two critical components: A stadium, and, more imporantly, a team.

Once again, Jay Miller was the man with the connections and the experience to deliver both.

Have Affiliation, Will Travel

Baseball teams don't go up on the block every day. Reid thought of Austin more as a AAA town, but, in the late 1990's there wasn't an opportunity to bring in a club from the Pacific Coast League (PCL), which, with teams in Oklahoma City and Albuquerque would be the most likely geographical fit.

Miller knew that J. Con Maloney owned a team in the class AA Texas League that might be for sale if the price was right.

"Con owned the Jackson club in the Texas League.  I heard that his team was for sale. [I] negotiated a sale price with him, and then I went out and I hired somebody who was really instrumental in our success, a guy named Mike Theissen. Mike is a consultant in Chicago who has done a lot of stadium deals."

Well, now he has. At the time, he hadn't done one. But he had the same kind of major attitude that was fueling the project, and he knew whom to approach.

Cutting the Diamond

The late nineties were the beginning of the big rebuilding boom in the minor leagues. Plans were on the drafting tables in Sacramento and Louisville for new AAA facilities that were aimed at doubling attendance with newer, cleaner parks and more 'fan friendly' food and facilities to bring a non-baseball audience back to the ballparks.

In most AA markets, though, the idea of spending $3,000 per seat to build a new ballpark, not including land, parking lots, etc., seemed like an astronimcal investment to many franchise owners.

The family, of course, has a great deal of experience with ballparks from every angle. Unlike some owners, who might come at the equation from the food side, or just the ego stroking of owning a baseball club, the Ryans were hard-core baseball people. Reid realized that the park itself sets the bar for fan expectations. That, and, unfortunately, movies with images of the run-down days of the minor leagues.

"We felt like there was only one chance at a first impression, coming into this market. Minor league sports has changed.  If you talk to some people about minor league sports they still think it’s Bull Durham or Slap Shot. They don’t know.  So we wanted people, when they walk  in this ballpark for the first time, to be blown away."

They also knew that the park had to appeal to people relocating to Round Rock for Dell who had lived in major league markets and had major league expectations of what a ballgame should look and feel like. Also, in a state where people drive hundreds of miles for meetings and events, being within the reach of Dallas and Houston set the bar that much higher.

"What we said was we want to have a big league operation on a minor league scale," recalls Reese Ryan, Reid's younger brother and CFO of the Express. "We want to have a big league quality facility. We want to have big league quality merchandise.  Because our fans are the same people going to Minute Maid or the Ballpark in Arlington.  If we have suite holders, they’re entertaining the same clients here that they’re entertaining at the Ballpark in Arlington,  so we don’t want to have someone walk into our suites and be let down, because  a week before they were [there]."

"The Ryans were very attuned to doing anything… Nothing was too good for fan comfort and fan enjoyment," notes Fendrick.

They hired Dallas-based HKS, Inc. Architects to design the new park. HKS had done the Ballpark at Arlington, which, along with Camden Yards in Baltimore, were the two ballparks that inspired a lot of the designs for both major and minor league builds.

The stadium had a projected cost of $14 million when the plans were being drafted. The deal that the Ryans struck with the City of Round Rock was for a park that would be built half with money raised from a hotel tax that can only be targeted towards such public facilities, and half with money brought in by the Ryan partnership. Then the local citizens through the project a curve ball that almost derailed the dream.

"A group of citizens passed an initiative referendum that it has to go to a vote of the people.  The next thing we know the estimates for the stadium is $21 million dollars.  The high tech boom was going on. Real estate was up. Everyone was building high-rises.  It was the worst time to build a stadium."

Continued...

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