Aberdeen’s mayor says the IronBirds will likely leave his city’s Ripken Stadium amid a long-simmering battle over costs.

Meanwhile, Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris has stepped forward with a concept for the stadium site’s possible rebirth as an expanded center for youth sports.

The IronBirds’ owners and city officials have been locked for years in a dispute over revenue sharing and maintenance obligations at the stadium. An arbitrator earlier this year told the two sides to continue talking.

But the arbitrator, retired federal judge William G. Connelly, also set a deadline of Friday to report back to him about the future of the team’s plans at the city-owned stadium. Mayor Patrick McGrady has previously said that if the two sides can’t come to a “meeting of the minds,” the agreement could be thrown out.

While McGrady said “we’re still attempting to negotiate in good faith,” he added: “I think that the writing is on the wall that the future of major league-affiliated minor league baseball in Aberdeen is short.”

A representative for Virginia-based Attain Sports, which acquired the IronBirds last fall, said they were “actively working with representatives from the city to establish a new lease that will ensure the continuation of professional baseball in Aberdeen,” but declined to comment further.

The IronBirds were brought to town by Aberdeen’s favorite son, Orioles Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr., in 2002, and are a Class-A affiliate of the Orioles. For the better part of two decades, city leaders have complained that they negotiated a lopsided deal that favored Ripken and strained the coffers of the city of 18,000 residents.

Ripken sold the team to Attain in October. The company already has two smaller baseball teams in Frederick, where officials badly want minor league baseball to return since losing their longtime team in 2020. Frederick has a population of roughly 86,000 — nearly five times larger than Aberdeen’s — and a plan and budget in place to improve its stadium.

Earlier this year, the IronBirds’ general manager departed, and an Attain employee in Frederick has been running the team’s operations, McGrady said.

Attain has previously only said that it is committed to keeping “affordable, family-friendly baseball” at Ripken Stadium. But that could mean bringing to town a lesser professional baseball operation, such as an independent league or collegiate summer league team, both of which it currently has in Frederick.

At a recent City Council meeting, Aberdeen Council member Tim Lindecamp said residents would not support that as a replacement.

“If Aberdeen doesn’t start supporting the team, the team’s not going to be here. I think this’ll be the last year for them,” Lindecamp said.

McGrady said in an interview this week that there could be another use for the stadium on the horizon. He said he recently reviewed a plan for the site from Harris’ Unrivaled Sports, which has owned Ripken’s youth baseball league since early 2023.

Unrivaled’s early plans include the construction of four multipurpose fields on top of the existing parking lot of Ripken Stadium; a new 200-room hotel; and a combined structure for retail businesses and parking garage, McGrady said.

The site already has a constellation of youth baseball fields called the Ripken Experience, including a scaled-down replica of Oriole Park at Camden Yards that has an adjoining Courtyard hotel modeled on the B&O Warehouse.

State records show Unrivaled hired three lobbyists during the most recent legislative session. McGrady said the lobbying effort is designed to redirect state funds earmarked for Ripken Stadium improvements to instead go toward the youth baseball project by Unrivaled.

“All of this has just been talk to this point,” McGrady said of Unrivaled’s pitch.

Asked about their plans, Unrivaled’s Executive Vice President for Strategic Initiatives Amanda Shank said: “We’d always welcome the opportunity to expand our impact on the City of Aberdeen.”

The IronBirds’ current lineup features young talent such as Vance Honeycutt, the Orioles’ 2024 first-round pick. Game attendance, however, has been abysmal to start the season, on top of declining numbers for years. Although opening day drew 2,069 fans, the team has averaged just 1,021 fans per game. The stadium has a capacity of 6,300.

In recent years, top Orioles prospects such as Jackson Holliday, Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman have all passed through Aberdeen while working their way to the big leagues. If Attain were to move the team, those players would instead head to Frederick and fans attending games in Harford County would likely end up watching players holding onto the dream of playing pro in independent ball or players hoping to latch onto a club as their college career ends.

In the early 2000s, the Ripken Stadium site was conceived as having more activity to justify the terms of the deal with Ripken. But development failed to materialize, and many such as Harford County Executive Bob Cassilly believe the site is underutilized. Cassilly, who previously told The Banner the county wanted to help keep the IronBirds in Aberdeen, said Thursday that he was “hearing a lot of ideas but nothing definite, and I’m not in a position to evaluate the possibilities.”

The city owns the ballpark and officials say they don’t have the millions of dollars needed for stadium upgrades. They have said the IronBirds should pay $2.5 million a year for the work. The IronBirds under Ripken argued the payment should be a fraction of that — more like $100,000, McGrady said. Connelly, the arbitrator, did not respond to a request for comment about the state of the talks.

A pot of state money is available to make upgrades to the ballpark to meet professional baseball league requirements, but not necessarily for the types of fan-facing improvements the city wants.

McGrady said “the aspirational aspect of baseball in Aberdeen has always been very exciting,” but has been much more difficult in practice.