Orange County Commissioner Ted Edwards and Mayor Teresa Jacobs sparred Tuesday over whether leaders were "duped" by pro soccer officials into agreeing to build a new stadium as a condition to land a Major League Soccer franchise in Orlando.

Edwards said he wanted to see the proof that both Orlando and Orange County looked at renovation options to the Citrus Bowl that could have accommodated a new MLS franchise, and the numbers that led both sides to decide that building a new soccer stadium was less costly.

An aide to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said Monday there is no written documentation on those costs.

"There isn't any documentation," said Heather Fagan, deputy chief of staff at Orlando City Hall. "Having said that, it was more than just 'chatting over coffee.'

"We asked our architects working on the Citrus Bowl project to evaluate incorporating MLS-requirements into the Citrus Bowl reconstruction. The architects came back and informed us it would be more cost-prohibitive then building a new stadium."

Since officials deemed a stadium retrofit to be "unfeasible," Edwards asked Jacobs in a memo last week for "any documentation concerning the review" of that possibility.

Jacobs said Edwards should have asked such questions before the vote. The mayor said she also disagreed with the notion that anyone was "duped" by league or team officials, and it was unfair to compare a new $1.2 billion stadium in Atlanta, to two Orlando venues that would cost a fraction of that.

"The reason we're building a two stadiums is because it's a lot less expensive," Jacobs said.

Fagan's response was similar to those from Orlando Venues Director Allen Johnson and Jacobs last month. Johnson said they looked at adding a retractable-roof system at the Citrus Bowl that would fan out over the lower bowl during soccer games but leave the stadium open to the sky during college football bowl games and other events.

"It was an extremely expensive proposal, probably close to $100 million, as I recall," Johnson said at the time. "We were told it would be cheaper to build a soccer-specific stadium than it would be to try to retrofit the Citrus Bowl."

MLS officials noted that Atlanta's new stadium would be built to meet the "intimate" soccer experience MLS wants, and can be accomplished in Orlando's new soccer stadium.

MLS spokesman Dan Courtemanche said last month that Atlanta's stadium will be built with soccer in mind. "Major League Soccer has repeatedly stated the importance of creating intimate fan experiences in our stadiums," Courtemanche wrote in a April 22 statement. "With a soccer stadium capacity of 29,000 fans, Atlanta's new $1.2 billion stadium fully achieves the League's initiatives — similar to how Orlando City SC's new $80 million downtown stadium accomplishes this goal."

Edwards, who voted against the stadium, responded Tuesday by saying that debate was "misleading" to the board.

"The city of Orlando looked at whether or not the Citrus bowl could be retrofitted, decided it was unfeasible...and doesn't have one scintilla of paper to back that up," he said. "It looks like it was home cooking and, unfortunately, we were duped."

Jacobs said she relied on county staff to analyze other MLS venues to determine if a Citrus Bowl retrofit could accommodate a pro soccer team, and they deemed it too costly. That appraisal, Jacobs said, "made walking around sense," though she now would prefer if the Citrus Bowl retrofit estimates were documented.

The dispute started last month when Edwards asked why Orlando was required to build an $85 million stadium to win its new MLS franchise, yet Atlanta was just awarded an expansion team without the same requirement.

Edwards said that since the league allowed Atlanta to put both its pro soccer and football teams into a proposed new $1.2 billion stadium, Orlando should have been allowed to put its new MLS team into a Citrus Bowl now undergoing a $207 million renovation.

He called it a "double standard," since the league rejected that option for Orlando, which plans to break ground this year on a 20,000-seat, soccer-centric stadium on West Church Street.

ddamron@tribune.com