Erlanger, county mayor continue clash over stadium naming rights

A county mayor continues to press Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Erlanger Health for more details on its naming rights deal for a new minor league baseball stadium, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.

Hamilton County (Tenn.) Mayor Weston Wamp criticized the deal after it was unveiled in May, saying the health system would be “footing the bill” for the Chattanooga Lookouts to play in the new publicly owned $115 million Erlanger Park. He also questioned the timing amid “severe nursing shortages and quality of care concerns.”

“I said that Erlanger is covering the Lookouts’ [$1 million annual] lease payments. I’ve not seen that contested or disproven anywhere,” Mr. Wamp told the Times Free Press for the Aug. 29 story.

“I support Erlanger, and I’ve also gotten a lot of positive feedback about what I said. That’s positive feedback from our community as a whole, from the nursing community and from employees at Erlanger.”

Neither Erlanger nor the Lookouts has disclosed how much the health system is paying for the naming rights. “Nobody knows the number except us two private entities,” Erlanger President and CEO Jim Coleman told the Times Free Press. “The number was in the budget. We did our homework.”

Mr. Coleman told the news outlet he consulted with Fort Wayne, Ind.-based Parkview Health’s CEO, who praised his health system’s reported $300,000-a-year naming deal for Parkview Field.

“Erlanger’s a strong brand, and we’re very careful with how we use that and where we position it,” Mr. Coleman told the newspaper. “We thought there’s probably not many better ways we could use it than here with the ballpark and the Lookouts.”

The post Erlanger, county mayor continue clash over stadium naming rights appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.