Bristol’s decision to scrap the baseball stadium it planned to build could mean the end of the Bristol State Liners, Chris Allen, CEO of Boyd Sports, said Thursday.
The Knoxville-based company owns and operates the team, which was part of the Appalachian League. Currently, the team is suspended with no games for the 2026 season because it has no stadium to play in. The State Liners, a minor league collegiate summer team, are no longer on the league’s website.
“Right now, talking to the MLB [Major League Baseball] office, I don’t know when they’re going to bring a State Liners back, or if there’s ever going to be a State Liners again, to be honest with you,” Allen said. “I hope I’m wrong. … Sometimes, the timing is just not right and maybe it’ll be revisited down the road.”
On Wednesday, Bristol officials announced that they will not move forward with the project because the city, which is in debt by more than $100 million, can’t afford to.
“After a comprehensive review of the project requirements, the potential funding sources and the overall debt requirements related to the construction and operation of a new baseball stadium, the city has decided not to move forward with the project at this time,” the release states.
The two-sentence release did not mention the State Liners.
Mayor Jake Holmes said building the stadium would not have been a “smart move.”
“It’s just the cost of the project coupled with the amount of debt we’d have to take on when we’ve got so much debt to begin with. … It wasn’t a feasible thing to do. As we were getting into budget season this year, and as we really started to look at finances, it solidified where we needed to go,’’ Holmes said.
At the end of the current fiscal year, the city will owe just over $90 million in general obligation debt and another $23.7 million for the new school that opened in August 2024, said Tamrya Spradlin, the interim city manager.
Some of the debt can be attributed to ongoing odor issues at the city’s closed quarry landfill. So far, the city has spent about $32 million on landfill-related projects, while future landfill costs are expected to total an additional $79 million.
The cost of building the stadium was expected to be $10 million to $12 million, former City Manager Randy Eads said last fall. When Eads announced in January that he was resigning to work for the state’s new attorney general, he listed the baseball stadium as one of his biggest accomplishments.
Last August, Eads announced the construction of a multiuse stadium that would have brought the State Liners back to the city. The team had announced earlier that it was moving to Bristol, Tennessee, where a new baseball facility would be built, but two plans fell through.
Bristol, Virginia, leaders had identified a site, on Bob Morrison Boulevard behind the Food City store, for the stadium, but they said in late January they had decided against purchasing the property.
Originally, Boyd Sports’ deal with Bristol, Virginia, was to provide $2 million for the project and pay for the turf field, the video board and a group sales amenity, Allen said.
When he learned that Eads was leaving the city, Allen said he worried that the deal might fall apart because Eads had spearheaded the project.
Allen said he spoke twice to the “new leadership” about two weeks ago, and they wanted to restructure the agreement.
“They came back and wanted to do more of a 50-50 split and that’s just something we weren’t willing to do,” he said.
He added that Boyd Sports is busy getting ready for the 2026 season for its other teams and doesn’t have time to think about the State Liners at this time. Boyd owns or operates the Knoxville Smokies, the Double-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, and several summer collegiate baseball teams: the Johnson City Doughboys, Greeneville Flyboys, Kingsport Axmen and Elizabethton River Riders.
The stadium would also have been home to the Virginia High School varsity baseball team and would have served as a venue for concerts, festivals and other community events.
For more than 50 years, the State Liners and previous versions of the team played at DeVault Stadium, Boyce Cox Field, on the Virginia side of Bristol, but the facility has been deteriorating for years.
In 2023, the team announced the move to Tennessee. For the last two seasons, the State Liners played in Greeneville and Johnson City, Tennessee.
DeVault Stadium will continue to be home to the high school baseball team. In the news release announcing the end of the project, city officials said they will continue to review the facility needs of DeVault Stadium so they can provide a “superior baseball facility” for the team.