Leading Stadium Expert Criticizes Worcester for Polar Park Cost Overruns

Leading Stadium Expert Criticizes Worcester for Polar Park Cost Overruns

Stadium expert Neil deMause, who wrote "Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turned Public Money Into Private Profit," is blasting the City of Worcester for the handling of the latest cost overruns at Polar Park for the Worcester Red Sox. 

In a post entitled, “Worcester adds $20m more in tax money to baseball stadium because it forgot how gravity works,” DeMause wrote Monday that “despite clever wordplay,” that $20 million in future tax money that would have gone to the city will now instead go to the additional site prep costs.

“The Worcester Red Sox stadium project has always been on the pricey side as minor-league baseball stadiums go, both in terms of projected construction cost ($90 million) and projected public subsidy (around $100 million — yep, the builders were set to get more in tax kickbacks and infrastructure funds than they actually spent on construction — so news that it’s facing significant cost overruns is not really what anyone needed to hear,” wrote deMause. 

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"These “negotiated changes” are that the team will cover the $9.5 million in increased construction costs, while the city will cover the $20 million in added land acquisition and site prep costs," he continued. "Part of the team’s costs (according to the city manager’s report that starts on page 59 here) will be covered by a doubling of the 50-cent ticket fee that was planned for WooSox games; the city’s costs will be funded by increasing the size of the tax increment financing district where future rises in property tax revenues will be siphoned off and used to pay for land acquisition costs."

Read the full post here. 

Pawtucket to Worcester

When the Pawtucket Red Sox first eyed moving to the 195 land in Providence in 2015, deMause was immediately critical of the deal. 

"Sports team owners almost never argue that public money for new stadiums will increase attendance, because it almost never does, at least not in the long run. Instead, they argue other things: that it will make for a better fan experience, that it will make the team more "competitive" (meaning profitable), that it will boost the local economy, that it is necessary to keep the team from moving. Aside from the profits, these are pretty much never true either, but they're arguments that have worked before on elected officials, so they're going to keep on rolling them out until they stop working."

And in 2017, when the PawSox looked to the former Apex site in Pawtucket, deMause said, “I can’t see how the PawSox bonds will be paid back.”

In July, the City of Worcester broke ground at Polar Park -- the new home of the Pawtucket Red Sox, after the ownership group officially announced in August 2018 they were taking the team from Pawtucket to Worcester.