Pearl won’t get football facility

Published 4:45 pm Thursday, October 12, 2006

About four months after he couldn’t raise money for a new sports arena in Jackson, developer Greg Disotell has dropped plans for a facility in Pearl.

“It’s not going to happen,” Rankin County developer Ronnie Garner said Tuesday of a proposed $40 million sports complex, which was to sit on 33 acres in the city of 22,000.

Garner said he received a letter this past week from an attorney representing Disotell, who wanted to relocate the Mississippi Headhunters, a minor league indoor football team, from Biloxi to Pearl.

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Disotell’s financial history came under scrutiny when he announced in late June that he wasn’t going to build a sports arena in Jackson where Smith-Wills Stadium stands.

Disotell announced he had plans for Pearl a day before he was to hand Jackson City Council members a three-year history of his tax records, credit and banking reports plus other financial and legal documents to show he could fund the project.

It was revealed that Disotell has nearly $300,000 in federal liens against him between 1998 and 2000. Also, he borrowed $70,000 from an investor, but defaulted.