Morning host Luis Hernandez spoke with Providence Journal reporter Patrick Anderson about how the Tidewater Landing deal got pushed through, and exactly how much public money will be going towards the project.
Luis Hernandez: Why are they building a soccer stadium in Pawtucket?
Patrick Anderson: They are building it because the PawSox, the Pawtucket Red Sox baseball team left, and that left a hole in the sports fandom and the economic development world of Pawtucket. And they think that soccer is a better bet to bring people to Pawtucket, and to serve as a hook for a bigger development that will include shops and restaurants and a plaza and apartments – and make a part of Pawtucket where there was industrial activity that needed to be cleaned up, and turn that into something where people will go.
Hernandez: So the bulk of this public financing is in the form of tax increment financing. It’s a TIF. How does this work?
Anderson: It basically means that the tax revenue that is going to be generated in the area around the stadium – and in this case, for Pawtucket it’s basically all of downtown. It’s a huge area, not just in the stadium – but the tax revenue, the new tax revenue that’s created after the stadium is built, then goes into a pot which funds to pay down the borrowing for the stadium. So they borrow the money, and then they use this tax revenue that’s created afterward to pay off that debt.
Hernandez: Wasn’t the original plan for the developer – Fortuitous Partners – to pay for the stadium?
Anderson: Yes. It was going to be that the stadium itself was paid for by the developer. And then the public would pay for infrastructure, and stuff that they needed to build those apartments and shops and that other development I mentioned before, but as the economy changed, inflation rose, and the developer struggled with making the stadium work economically. So they came back to the table and asked the state to sweeten the pot and move that money to the stadium. Now the public will pay for the stadium, and then probably have to pay more down the line to get those other things built. All told it comes out to around 60 million in public subsidy.
Hernandez: An October poll, the Roger Williams University/WPRI 12 poll, showed that a majority of likely Rhode Island voters were against using public money. How has this issue shown up in the general election?
Anderson: The Republican candidate for governor, Ashley Kalus, is opposed to the deal, opposed to the stadium and public financing. The governor, Dan McKee, was the one who pushed this through and is clearly in support of it. So it’s been a Democrat versus Republican issue. And it was similar in the PawSox stadium, the proposal to build the PawSox in a new stadium a couple of years ago. The GOP opposed that deal, and Democrats in the General Assembly supported it, and that was a issue in the race for former House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello’s seat. So it’s basically an issue in the governor’s race where Kalus doesn’t want this deal to go through, McKee does. And one interesting question that I don’t think we know the answer to is, if Kalus won, would she stop this project after it’s partially gotten off the ground and try to kill it, even though it’s already kind of in the works?
Hernandez: Let’s look at the whole project again. There’s a stadium with commercial and housing promised to go up around the stadium?
Anderson: Yep. The stadium is on the west side of the river. And then on the east side of the river, connected by a pedestrian bridge, the plan was to have apartments and shops and restaurants. Originally there was going to be offices too. But that’s mostly been changed to apartments as the office market has kind of tanked since COVID. But getting more housing is a big issue everywhere and including in Rhode Island with rents skyrocketing and houses really expensive. So that’s seen as a big benefit, to get houses and housing in an area where there hasn’t been as much demand, hasn’t been as much development recently.
Hernandez: This is not a Major League Soccer team. Is there enough draw, interest in soccer for this to go through?
Anderson: That’s a tough to answer. And the only way we’ll find out is to see it happen. There hasn’t been a brand new soccer stadium of this size here in New England. Hartford has a team that would play in the same league. But it’s a much less expensive stadium that they built. They’re not constructed as a destination, where the venue itself brings people in. They have built larger stadiums in other parts of the country, they’ve done fairly well. But will that last? When will the novelty wears off, are people still going to go? You know, these teams in the second tier of American soccer, there a lot of them that have kind of come and gone. Some are successful, some aren’t. They can be successful one year, and then and then not so much the next. It’s not like, you know, major league baseball or the NBA where once you have – or the NFL, where once you have an established franchise, they’re just printing money at will.
Hernandez: Where are they right now in the process? Have they broken ground on this?
Anderson: They have done a huge amount of work cleaning up the site, which was a former manufactured coal plant, and was toxic. They basically cleaned up that whole area. And if you go by there now, you can see the rectangle of a soccer pitch laid out. But it’s flat, nothing vertical has gone up yet. So the question is, when will that happen? The developer says by the end of the year. And the borrowing, the public borrowing to pay for it is supposed to happen by the end of the year.
Hernandez: But do they have a goal as to when they want to have this thing set up and open, and when the team is going to actually start playing?
Anderson: The team is supposed to begin playing in the 2024 year, which I believe starts in the spring – roughly around the time that baseball does. So whether they’ll make that goal, I don’t know. But that’s the goal, is 2024.
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