A new Pawtucket?

Rendering of the Fortuitous Partners proposal for Pawtucket

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

t’s far too early to know the fate of a Fortuitous Partners proposal to create a $400 million project in downtown Pawtucket that would include a minor league soccer stadium, an “indoor sports event center,’’ apartments, a hotel, offices, shops and restaurants. What will the financing environment look like over the next few years? What if the nation goes into a recession soon? But from what we know now it does look like a better -- and of course much bigger -- project for the city and region than the Pawtucket Red Sox plan to build a new stadium – as sad as the team’s exit is.

The project would leverage people’s love of being along the water – in this case the Seekonk River (which I always think is the Blackstone in that part of Pawtucket) – and presumably heavily promote the project to people from very expensive Greater Boston who might want to live in Pawtucket, further encouraged to do so by the Pawtucket-Central Falls MBTA commuter rail station, scheduled to open in 2022. A big question is how successful the soccer stadium would be, however popular the greatest international sport has become around here, considering that the major league New England Revolution is based just up the road at Gillette Stadium, in Foxboro.

The public part of the financing totals $70 million to $90 million, most of it from a commonly used tax technique called “tax increment financing.’’ This lets developers use part of the tax revenue created by developments to help pay to build them. Also involved in what the developers call “Tidewater Landing’’ are often controversial federal “Opportunity Zone’’ tax breaks that are supposed to encourage economic development in low-income areas but, many note, greatly benefit rich developers. But then, most tax breaks favor the rich. (See below.)

In any case, I hope that this is not one of those projects whose fate is tied in knots in layer upon layer of regulatory red tape. America used to be known for doing big projects; now, big – and needed— projects often seem impossible because of the veto power of too many interest groups, public and private. And there is no such thing as a perfect project. For an overview of our big-project paralysis, using New York’s Penn Station as Exhibit A, please hit this link.