NBA NEWS

Milwaukee, Bucks’ officials expect stadium deal

The Sports Xchange

May 26, 2015 at 11:20 am.

Milwaukee city officials and Bucks team president Peter Feigin emerged from a closed-door meeting with Gov. Scott Walker optimistic a financing deal to pay for the team’s proposed $500 million downtown stadium could be completed this week.

The threat of losing the team to relocation at the hands of the NBA was looming for the Bucks’ franchise. The league announced it would buy back the team with the intent of moving it, possibly to Seattle, without a new stadium by 2017.

Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett said Tuesday there is optimism on all sides that an agreement is near. However, he cautioned that work was still to be done before the city could celebrate the end of months-old discussions in the statehouse.

The Bucks have been the talk of cities hungry to add their own NBA franchise since now-retired commissioner David Stern put the new ownership of the team on the clock.

The lease extension signed in 2013 for BMO Harris Bradley Center expires in September 2017 and was termed as a “bridge to a new facility.”

Senator Herb Kohl, who purchased the NBA team in 1985 for $18 million, sold the Bucks for $550 million in April 2014. The Bradley Center opened in 1988.

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