Dining in the field

McCoy Stadium when they still played baseball there
— Photo by Meegs

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

On July 24, a bunch of us celebrated a friend’s birthday with dinner at a table in the middle of the field at McCoy Stadium, home of the Pawtucket Red Sox, which of course is decamping for Worcester. The stands have been eerily empty in this COVID-closed season but there were lots of widely separated but fully occupied tables at what has been turned into a very nice reservation-only, open-air restaurant this crazy summer. Luscious lobster- salad sandwiches, by the way. And the birthday girl was honored on the giant screen. I’ve been to McCoy many times but was again surprised by how big it seems for a Minor League team.

It had been a hot day, but a nice breeze over the grass kept us comfortable and then we enjoyed a gorgeous sunset. For some reason, McCoy has superb sunsets.

I felt a pang knowing that professional baseball will probably never again be played at McCoy, which more likely than not will be torn down. We  always found a PawSox home game a very nice outing for out-of-towners; foreigners seemed to especially enjoy it.

I’m getting a tour soon of the “WooSox” site, where the Polar Park stadium (named after the Worcester-based seltzer company), is going up; I’ll report back. Will pandemic problems prevent it from opening  on schedule next spring?

Maybe some day professional baseball will return to Rhode Island; it certainly has the population density and location to be attractive for a sports team. (I have always thought that the most interesting  and dramatic place for a Rhode Island baseball stadium would have been on Bold Point, in East Providence.)

The biggest question may be: How popular will baseball be in coming years compared to other sports? Is it too late to turn McCoy into a soccer stadium?

xxx 

The death on July 29 of Lou Schwechheimer from COVID-19 has saddened many people. Lou was the longtime vice president and general manager of the PawSox during the club’s heyday under the ownership of the late Ben Mondor. Lou, working with Mr. Mondor and Mike Tamburro, then the club’s president and now vice chairman,  turned the organization into one of the most successful teams in Minor League Baseball.

I encountered Lou many times, and his presence was a tonic. He seemed to have endless supplies of energy, enthusiasm, ingenuity and good humor. He had a memorable capacity for  making and keeping friends and boosting the community that the PawSox entertained for so many years.

Will they get a cut rate on billboard ads?

From The New England Council (newenglanddiary.com)

Polar Beverages’ CEO Ralph Crowley Jr. will become part owner of the Pawtucket Red Sox as the team prepares for a 2021 move to Worcester. Polar Beverages has been operating in Worcester since 1882.

The PawSox announced Crowley’s ownership at the ceremonial groundbreaking of the new Polar Park stadium. The ballpark has been designed to seat over 10,000 visitors and is expected to host various year-round events. In addition to minor league baseball games, the City of Worcester plans to take advantage of the new facility for road races, collegiate/high school sporting events, concerts, firework displays, and more. The stadium has become the center of a public-private redevelopment project of Worcester’s Canal District.

Worcester’s City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. saw the groundbreaking of the park to be “a special moment in Worcester’s history — a line of demarcation separating Worcester before Polar Park and Worcester after Polar Park.”

Woosox's Polar Park as high-tech center

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

I predict that after a couple of years of curiosity and excitement, attendance will fall at Polar Park, the new baseball stadium to be built as the home of what is now (sigh) called the Pawtucket Red Sox. Polar Park (after Worcester-based Polar Beverages) is supposed to open in 2021. Eventually there may be considerable loyal buyers’ remorse for the big tax breaks and other publicly financed incentives being given to the group of very rich men who are moving the team. And how popular will baseball in general be in a decade? Whatever, I wish them well.

Anyway, however the Boston Red Sox farm team does in Worcester, something of long-term value may come out of the project:

Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the PawSox will partner to improve ballpark technology. This will include having WPI students working on such projects as mobile apps for ordering food, technology to ease parking and special seating for those with sensory challenges.

WPI’s president, Laurie Leshin, said: “As Worcester’s hometown technological university, WPI shares the club’s vision and opportunity for Polar Park: to create a versatile regional sports venue that combines a traditional ballpark environment with modern, smart, and connect amenities.”

So however successful the park turns out to be as a business, technological applications, some of them utterly unanticipated, might come out of the park that can be used to improve things at other large entertainment venues. Think of the surprising electronics and medical advances that came out of the U.S. space program in the ‘60s.

The PawSox mystery persists

Downtown Worcester, with City  Hall on the right.

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

 It remains surprising how little information has come out about Worcester’s pitch to lure the Pawtucket Red Sox to Massachusetts’s second-largest city, especially since Rhode Island Governor Raimondo signed a bill last month aimed at helping to finance a new stadium for the team at Pawtucket’s Apex site.

No one hereabouts seems to know what Worcester and the commonwealth have in mind, and how much information has been transmitted to the team owners.

At the same time, news reports point to the Kraft/Patriot family’s intensifying interest in building a major stadium for professional soccer (called variations of “football’’ in most of the world) in Boston  for their New England Revolution team. Makes sense. Soccer has become ever more popular in America in the past few years. I was struck by how many bars and restaurants had World Cup games on their TVs in the recent competition, won by France. Within a couple of decades soccer stadiums may become more important sports venues  here than  stadiums for baseball and American football (concussions, anyone?)

Innning after inning after inning in PawSox stadium saga

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

The latest Pawtucket Red Sox stadium financing proposal supposes that, among other things, Pawtucket would get enough income (to pay off  construction bonds)  from stadium-related income, including from stores and restaurants that would purportedly go up around the stadium. Given the current fragile state of much retail in the Age of Amazon, that expectation – or hope – may be excessive. And how popular will minor league baseball be over the next few decades? And, lest we forget, Pawtucket already has a big municipal debt burden.

Then there’s the assertion that the state wouldn't  be on the hook if Pawtucket couldn’t pay the interest on the bonds that it sells to help fund the stadium. The trouble is that the cold, hard bond market closely connects the fortunes of municipalities and the states they're in. To maintain its bond rating, Rhode Island might have to come in to rescue the city if the PawSox promoters’ projections turn out to be wrong.  

Consider that back in 1991, then-Gov. Bruce Sundlun decided that the state had to step after a private insurer of deposits in credit unions and small banks went bust. So far as the bond market was concerned that state had to come to the rescue. After all, it was called the Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation….And Pawtucket is part of Rhode Island.

I hope that the PawSox stay – I know they don’t want to move to Worcester! --  but the latest deal has some big risks for taxpayers. I wonder if they can find plausible additional stadium users besides a baseball team. Soccer? Horse shows? Croquet?

Desperately chasing business

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

Worcester is putting in its own bid to get Amazon’s “second headquarters’’ in addition to being part of the  Massachusetts  application to the Seattle-based monster. Not a bad idea – two lottery tickets instead of just one.  But it is hard to see Worcester having the infrastructure, techno personnel and tax-break resources to lure Amazon and what the company asserts will be 50,000 new employees. Maybe, like Providence, they could get a couple of small slices of the pie if Amazon picks Boston. (I still bet on Austin.)

xxx

I ask again: Why does Massachusetts, a rich state, refuse to help pay to build sports stadiums for private companies while much poorer Rhode Island is looking to cough up such money for the Pawtucket Red Sox?

Worcester pitches to PawSox

Downtown Worcester.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

Worcester officials are quietly reaching out to Pawtucket Red Sox owners about moving the franchise there,  perhaps at the vacant Wyman-Gordon Co. property downtown.  Presumably they’d pitch the old industrial city’s location well within the Boston Red Sox orbit, its slowly reviving downtown and its commuter rail service to and from Greater Boston.

But the Worcester metro area is not on the Main Street of the East Coast, Route 95, as is Pawtucket, and, at 924,000 doesn’t have the population size of the Providence metro area, 1.6 million. And many simply find the Providence area more interesting, or at least more complicated.

Further, however, much  as Worcester officials and downtown business leaders might like to get the PawSox franchise and a stadium to go with it, public support would probably fade if and when the PawSox made their formal proposals for aid from the state and the city, especially if  state and local tax revenues fall over the next few months. And foes would cite  as warning the infamous cost overruns and other hassles in the construction of Dunkin’ Donuts Park in fiscally sick Hartford, the home of the hideously named Hartford Yard Goats, a Colorado Rockies farm team. Building baseball stadiums is not for the faint of heart!

Anyway, the PawSox owners clearly want to stay in Pawtucket.

Trying to figure out a new stadium's opportunity cost to the taxpayers

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

’Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.’’

-- Economist John Maynard Keynes

The latest proposal by the Pawtucket Red Sox for a new baseball stadium in that city is considerably better than previous ones. Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economics professor who has frequently denounced taxpayer subsidies for stadiums, called the proposal “like a pretty good deal,”  reported The Boston Globe. But, he added, he wanted more details before deciding whether to endorse it.

“To have that level of private participation is certainly above the norm in Triple-A baseball,” Mr. Zimbalist told the paper.

But there are very big questions. One of the biggest, to me, is the most difficult to answer: How popular will baseball  - and Minor League Baseball at that -- be over the decades of this public-private deal? Will changing demographics make the sport less popular (and soccer more so) in our region? If so, will the PawSox owners face what many big-store retailers face: the sort of existential change in consumer patterns that could lead to few if any stores in, for instance, Providence Place within a few years.  (Luckily, Providence Place is much more architecturally attractive and interesting than most malls and could work well for such functions as college classrooms and assembly halls, libraries and medical clinics.)

The state would have to pay about $43 million, the city about $29 million and the PawSox organization about $86 million in an overall cost of $158 million in bond principal andinterest over the 30-year deal.

What’s the opportunity cost of the total $72  million that taxpayers would cover? Would such an investment be better spent on fixing up transportation infrastructure and/or schools and/or parks, etc., etc.? Or on a baseball stadium to be used from April to October?

It would be very useful at this point if the public could be provided with rigorous, plausible projections of what the market for Minor League Baseball games could be over the next few decades of taxpayer exposure. But perhaps that’s impossible.

In any case, we need a rigorous independent study on the frequency of  possible nonbaseball uses of the proposed stadium to help pay for the project, especially given  the limitations imposed by that annual cool snap called “New England winter’’.

As for self-interested projections by Pawtucket (which, like the PawSox, is salivating for this project) and the team on the sales- and income-tax revenues that might be generated by the new stadium: Most such projections turn out wildly wrong. There are just too many variables. The late British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s remark about politics increasingly applies to business, too: “A week is an eternity in politics.’’

Another point that I assume that the PawSox, the city and the state have  carefully considered: The Pawtucket exits on Route 95 are heavily used by people leaving or entering Providence’s East Side. What sort of plans are being made to handle the traffic on game days? At the same time, the new stadium could be a boon for restaurants in Pawtucket, Central Falls and northern Hope Street on the East Side.

My guess is that the Rhode Island legislature will pass and Governor Raimondo will sign a bill close to the latest proposal. They had better get as much solid information on it ASAP, especially given the high possibility that there will be a national recession starting this year or next, with plunging tax revenues. This will be a big, scary bet.

Back in the recession of the early ‘90s, Gov. Bruce Sundlun bravely pushed through major and expensive improvements at T.F. Green Airport in the face of much opposition. It turned out to be a very good bet for the state’s economy. But transportation infrastructure is essential. A baseball stadium ain’t, as much as I love the PawSox.

Whatever, deciding to have the taxpayers help pay for a baseball stadium for a private company in the end may be based more on romance than on economic rationality. But then, that’s true of many public-policy decisions.

New PawSox stadium? Alluring but dubious economics for the state

Updated from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary'' column in GoLocal24.com

The Pawtucket Red Sox want the State of Rhode Island to cough up some money to help the Boston Red Sox farm team build a new stadium, either keeping it where McCoy Stadium  is or somewhere else in the old mill town, perhaps at the site of the Mayan pyramid of the Apex store. Pawtucket is attractive because, among other things, it’s close to Massachusetts. (Actually, most of tiny Rhode Island is close to the Bay State. Indeed, many Rhode Islanders drive through parts of Massachusetts daily to get to parts of Rhode Island.)

The new -- and tough -- state Senate president, Dominick Ruggerio, who knows a lot about construction, likes the idea of a new stadium and having the state pay for some of this project, which would benefit some very rich people.  Apparently Gov. Gina Raimondo also likes the idea, which might involve putting up a replica of Fenway Park.

Would  it be worth it? Years ago, when I worked in the newspaper business, the line was that while only about 25 percent of daily newspaper readers read the sports pages regularly, that 25 percent is intensely interested in their teams andapt to buy the products advertised in the sports pages (especially car stuff). Should the state spend a lot of money to please the minority of people who are baseball enthusiasts, and in a time when tax revenues are falling behind projections?

And a new stadium in downtown Pawtucket would remove from the city a lot of land that could be used for a diversified mix of business and give it to one business that, of course, could up and leave.

Of course, there would be perhaps a couple of hundred temporary construction jobs to build a new stadium but only a few dozen permanent ones (if that) at a new stadium.

Still, having a shiny new stadium in a well-landscaped setting and access to public transit might raise some animal spirits in Greater Providence. I think it would be very dubious “economic development’’ from a macro viewpoint. But if it’s to be done, why not get a really exciting design for it and put it where many people could see it, including its very own “Green Monster,’’ from some distance away. 

How about along the water in East Providence?

Charles Chieppo: Can Mass. get its tax giveaways under control?

By CHARLES CHIEPPO 

BOSTON

A few months ago, I wrote about Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s plan to end the state’s film tax credit. Powerful opponents succeeded at killing the proposal, but if a pending piece of legislation becomes law, those special interests will have won the battle but lost the war.

Most states offer an array of business tax breaks that result in significant foregone revenue. In Massachusetts, the amount is in the billions. Legislation backed by state Auditor Suzanne Bump would give her office access to business tax returns solely for the purpose of auditing “tax expenditures,” as the various tax breaks are known.

Under the legislation, the auditor’s office would be able make sure businesses actually qualify for the breaks they receive; track whether state agencies are appropriately pursuing “clawbacks” that require businesses to reimburse taxpayers if the recipient fails to meet requirements of the tax-break agreement; and determine if commitments to job creation or other public benefits have been met.

Predictably, the bill has drawn howls of opposition from business organizations, and the legislature must indeed carefully craft any legislation to limit the scope of the auditor’s review of business tax returns to gathering tax-expenditure data. But the fact that 37 other states already grant the entity that performs their audit function access to this information demonstrates that it can be implemented without making a business that receives a tax break the victim of a public witch hunt.

Other Massachusetts agencies, including the Massachusetts Probation Service and the Department of Transitional Assistance, already have access to the returns. It seems appropriate that tools to make sure that people aren’t wrongfully collecting welfare benefits also should be available to government to ensure that businesses aren’t getting tax breaks they don’t qualify for.

Most business tax breaks are likely to be more effective than the film tax credit, which cost Massachusetts taxpayers about $88 million in foregone revenue during fiscal 2015. A Department of Revenue report found that state taxpayers paid nearly $119,000 for each job created by the credit in 2012.

And Massachusetts is hardly alone. A report from Maryland’s Department of Legislative Services estimated that, even assuming that every production filmed in that state would have gone elsewhere but for tax credits, state and local taxpayers would still recoup just 10 cents on every dollar awarded in credits between 2012 and.2016.

Government incentives to promote economic development are by no means always bad. But with one U.S. Government Accountability Office report finding that state and local tax revenues are not on track to return to pre-Great Recession rates as a percentage of gross domestic product until 2058, taxpayers deserve to know that any funds diverted from schools, transportation funding or other priorities are actually boosting the economy. Providing public auditors with the data to review those incentives is an important step toward providing that assurance.

Charles Chieppo (Charlie_Chieppo@hks.harvard.edu) is a fellow of the Ash Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School. This piece first ran at governing.com.

Editor’s note from Robert Whitcomb: Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello seems determined to raid the Rhode Island state coffers to give what are now called the Pawtucket Red Sox a stadium in Providence with massive tax giveaways as part of the deal. Of course those who don’t get the giveaways will have to make up the lost tax revenue.

Male public officials like to be associated with professional sports teams as an affirmation of their masculinity and a opportunity to meet present and future sports celebrities. Photo ops!

They think it's glamorous to be in bed with these rather rapacious  and  usually very profitable sports businesses.

That even Major League stadiums rarely make macro-economic sense for their communities, let alone farm teams like the PawSox  in cool climates, gets swept aside in what is really a psychiatric and emotional problem. It isn’t serious public policy.

.

Charles Chieppo: Providence stadium bogus 'economic development'

  BOSTON

As long as governments are made up of human beings, we can't expect them to be perfect. But they should learn from their mistakes, such as the whopper that Rhode Island state officials made in 2010 when they plowed $75 million into 38 Studios, a now-defunct video-game company started by former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling.

Fast-forward five years, and another proposal that combines baseball, business and politics is on the table in Rhode Island. The owners of the Pawtucket Red Sox, Boston's top farm team, are asking for millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies as part of a plan to build a downtown ballpark in neighboring Providence.

Under the proposal, the owners would spend $85 million to build the stadium and a parking garage. The state would take out a 30-year lease on the stadium land, for which taxpayers would pay $5 million annually in rent. The team would lease the stadium back from the state for $1 million per year, leaving state taxpayers on the hook for $4 million a year, or $120 million over the 30-year lease term.

The team is also asking city taxpayers for help. They want Providence to sign an agreement that would exempt the land from property taxes for 30 years.

The owners are following what has become a well-worn script for teams looking for stadium subsidies, warning that they will likely leave Rhode Island if the deal isn't approved. They've also commissioned the requisite economic-impact study, which estimates that the stadium would generate $12.3 million a year in direct spending for the local economy and about $2 million annually in state tax revenue. As usual with such studies, the owners call the projections "conservative."

Perhaps Holy Cross College economist Victor Matheson said it best when he told The Atlantic that, when it comes to these impact studies, "take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten, and that's a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact."

Building a minor-league baseball stadium in Providence would add little net new money to the local economy. The majority of fans would come from close by, meaning that they would likely spend their entertainment dollars at an area movie theater or restaurant if they weren't going to a game

As for benefits to businesses around the stadium, they tend to be limited to just a few blocks. And with 72 home games, what happens during the other 80 percent of the year?

The last time that  Rhode Island leaders dabbled at the intersection of baseball, business and politics, it cost their constituents $90 million (the $75 million in principle invested in 38 Studios plus $15 million in interest). Some may conclude that such non-economic benefits as local pride or entertainment value would make a Providence stadium worth the investment, but they should know better than to view the proposal as genuine economic development.

Charles Chieppo (Charlie_Chieppo@hks.harvard.edu) is a  research fellow of the Ash Center at Harvard's Kennedy School.  This piece originated at governing.com.

Petition against moving Pawtucket Red Sox

  This petition against moving the Pawtucket Red Sox may be of interest.

Rhode Island an easy mark

  This very interesting piece from GoLocalProv suggests that experience has shown wheeler-dealers that Rhode Island is an easy mark.

"The City of Boston tax records show the ownership team that owns the Boston Red Sox pays millions annually to the city in property taxes for 103-year-old Fenway Park and they pay hundreds of thousands more for three other parcels of land.

"The same ownership group is leading the effort to move the Pawtucket Red Sox to Providence and asking for tens of millions in state subsidies, and looking in Providence to avoid paying property taxes for decades.''