The Arizona Diamondbacks' ultimatum to Maricopa County to pay for improvements to Chase Field continues to reverberate in the Valley and beyond.
In the letter to county officials, the team threatened to sue to break its lease and wants to consider its options to move from downtown Phoenix.
The team’s request for $187 million from the county for future upkeep came as shock to county officials, who denied the team's request to to break the lease. The Diamondbacks are arguing that the county has to keep Chase Field in “state of the art” condition, but Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman took issue with that language in an interview on PBS’s Arizona Horizon.
“The county is obligated to keep that facility in good condition for the public till 2028. The ‘state of the art’ is in a mission statement, it is not in the facility’s use agreement," he said. "We are not contractually based because then you start getting into whose definition is state of the art?"
