The Dallas Mavericks face a July deadline to finalize plans with the City of Dallas for a new stadium complex. CEO Rick Welts cites two potential locations.

DALLAS — The CEO of the Dallas Mavericks confirmed Thursday that the looming deadline is the month of July for the team and the City of Dallas to come to terms on a new home and entertainment complex site for the team. 

But the NBA Hall of Fame inductee did not tip his hand, which site his bosses prefer.

Mavs CEO Rick Welts was the guest of honor at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce at the Hilton Anatole. In a Q&A session with Ollie Chandhok, president and publisher of the Dallas Business Journal, Welts agreed to talk about the future of the organization in limited detail.

“We want to be the team that actually wears Dallas on the jersey and is in Dallas somewhere, right,” Chandhok asked as the crowd of business leaders and Dallas-area politicians applauded the question.

Welts who, among his 40-plus years of NBA accolades, guided the Golden State Warriors ownership in the development of the Chase Center in San Francisco, confirmed again that the site of the former Valley View Center property in North Dallas (Preston Road and LBJ Freeway) that the Adelson/Dumont families already own, is a potential location for a new 50-acre stadium and entertainment complex. 

So is the current site of Dallas City Hall, a location he prefers to call the “downtown site.”

“We love the idea of a downtown site,” Welts said. “And, you know, we are on the clock. And whether or not that’s going to come to fruition is really going to be where we can get with the city between now and July, and trying to figure out if there’s a path forward there.”

July because the Mavs ownership needs five years to have a new stadium built by 2031, the year their lease ends at the American Airlines Center. They want the Mavs to play in a sports complex the company owns and operates, along with hotels, restaurants, retail space, and an additional performance venue.

Dr. Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, are the primary owners of the Dallas Mavericks, having acquired majority control from Mark Cuban in December 2023. Patrick Dumont serves as the Mavericks’ Governor and is the Chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp., the casino-resort company associated with the ownership group. The Sands Corporation sponsored the Thursday meeting of the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce.

“So, you know, I’m an optimist,” said Welts. “We’re on that path,” he said of an eventual site decision by July. “And we’ll see where we can get in the next few months.”

But while the Mavs CEO didn’t tip his hand what site the Mavs prefer, he did praise Dallas City Manager Kimberly Tolbert for pursuing all options, including the potential sale of the current site of Dallas City Hall. 

“And it could be that the city is going to have to consider, either renovating that building or relocating that site, in which case there’s a possibility there could be redevelopment. That was in the context of discussing a lot of different sites. That was a some of our conversation. And, you know, I think I think the city manager was doing what any CEO of the city should be doing at that point in engaging businesses who have an interest in and being in Dallas and, and making that happen.”

The only real commitment Welts made during his appearance at the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce annual meeting was about the championship aspirations of the organization he now leads.

“I’m so excited about building a new championship team around this generational player named Cooper Flagg.”

The question to be answered by July is where that potential championship team will call home.