Building a $420 million dollar football stadium was bound to be complicated.
The county didn’t sign a lease with the Bengals until May 1997, and the preliminary “guaranteed maximum price” of $287 million wasn’t announced until November of that same year. The amount seemed to be more than expected, and it wasn’t “accepted” until April of 1998. What this accomplished was anyone’s guess, since the guaranteed maximum price ended up being merely a guess, and certainly not guaranteed.