Worcester Business Journal

14 Worcester Business Journal | December 6, 2021 | wbjournal.com F O C U S L A W & A C C O U N T I N G T he City of Worcester's effort to pay off the $160-million cost of the Polar Park baseball stadium over 30 years is off to a rocky start. Yet, despite a revenue shortfall in the Worcester Red Sox's first season at the ballpark, city officials so far avoided breaking the promise they made in 2018 when the team announced it was moving from Rhode Island to the Canal District : e stadium will pay for itself. "With a project of this size, you are constantly course correcting," City Manager Edward Augustus said. "You just have to keep your eye on the ball, which is getting the project functional." e 30-year plan to pay off the city's long- term borrowing is reflective of the rushed nature of the entire ballpark project, where officials are solving problems on the fly and figuring out how to meet their significant team-friendly obligations with minimal time to prepare. To date, the city doesn't have a separate and transparent way to easily track the ballpark's revenues and expenses to ensure the project does indeed pay for itself, with officials planning on setting up such accounts midway through the team's second season. "I had hoped those accounts would have been set up when I started with the city," said Tim McGourthy, the City of Worcester chief financial officer, who started his job on June 22, 2020. The North Star When the then Pawtucket Red Sox announced in August 2018 they would move into a new Worcester- built stadium for the 2021 baseball season, Augustus said the project would pay for itself, with the taxes and other municipal revenues generated within a special tax district surrounding the ballpark slated to exceed the cost to build the stadium. Over the next three years, Augustus would repeatedly call this promise his North Star in all decision-making, even as unexpected obstacles caused costs to swell to a point where the special tax district had to be expanded and Polar Park is now the most expensive minor league ballpark ever built. With construction finished, Augustus said this remains his guiding principle. "At the end of the 30 years, it is going to be more profitable than we initially thought," Augustus said. e city's ability to generate revenue inside the ballpark tax district has less to do with the team's ability to attract fans, and is more greatly tied to new commercial and residential developments within the tax district. While a portion of the city's revenue plans include parking fees, taxes on concessions, and the WooSox annual lease payments, the bulk of the money used to pay down the city's bonds will come from property taxes. Initially, when the team announced its move in 2018, the development designed to generate the necessary tax revenue was a $125-million plan from Boston developer Madison Properties, which included hotels, apartments, retail, restaurants, and office space. In the three years since, that proposal has shrunk and its various elements have been delayed. However, two new proposed developments in the ballpark district are expected to make up the shortfall caused by the changes in Madison's project, Augustus said. e first is a $110-million, 13-story apartment-and-retail tower called e Cove from Worcester developer Churchill James LLC. e second is a 400-unit housing complex from Boston Capital Development on the former site of the Table Talk Pies manufacturing facility. Any other developments moving into the ballpark district over the course of the next 30 years will help cover the Worcester's 30-year plan to have the ballpark pay for itself has already hit a rough patch, as the city finds unexpected solutions BY BRAD KANE WBJ Editor Polar Park's bill is coming due This June 4 game at Polar Park between the WooSox and the Rochester Red Wings was attended by 6,029 fans. PHOTO | MATT WRIGHT Edward Augustus Tim McGourthy

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