“This must be Jack’s attempt at a joke, considering how many times he came in here to cheerlead the mayor’s initiatives, including Shockoe baseball,” Mark Kronenthal, Jones’ chief of staff, said in an interview.

Berry requested a meeting with Jones at the end of April 2015 to provide an update about the ongoing negotiations Berry had been conducting to continue pursuing the project, according to the mayor’s office.

Asked this week about how Berry’s work on the stadium proposal contrasts with his recent statements, Jones chuckled.

“Jack was probably one of our closest partners on the baseball project,” he said. “He worked extremely hard to make it happen, and so, you don’t back away from stuff you’ve been involved with. … But if that’s what he wants to do, then that’s OK.”

Berry said he doesn’t recall any specifics of his last meeting with Jones about the project but didn’t offer any factual corrections to the account provided by city officials.

In an interview Friday, he reiterated his past support for the project but said he saw no contradictions between his previous statements and what he’s said on the campaign trail.