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A guy we knew many years ago had a nice restaurant but struggled every year to survive. Remember after the hospital opened commenting that how his business must have improved with the hospital. In fact he told me it was the opposite!
- Nobody ever left the hospital once they were inside.
- It they wanted anything to eat they had the food court
- In fact he was losing some customers to the food court
Reading story in MassLive today about some of the businesses around Polar Park, we could not help but remember that conversation. The tenants at Polar Park do not want fans wandering around the neighborhood spending monies in local businesses...
They want to keep these patrons insider their confines spending their monies inside Polar Park... Now keep in mind while reading column below, Polar Park is not at full capacity yet.
‘A lousy week’: While WooSox celebrated victories inside Polar Park, surrounding businesses say they suffered losses due to city’s poor parking plan https://t.co/maSHo0f2Zl
— masslivenews (@masslivenews) May 25, 2021
Comments
The 4:05 game time is just a horrible idea because it kinda makes people either eat at the ballpark for dinner, or be hungry and spend tons of money on a snack until after the game. Honestly the woosox organization has been making a lot of poor decisions such as: timing of Saturday games sucks (especially for local businesses), deciding to not build the parking garage before the stadium opened and now it’s horrible especially since they want to “help” the local businesses around the Kelly square area but they’re relying on businesses to give up their spots for games and use places like Union Station to park, there’s no shuttles to the stadium from the parking garages/lots that are 10-15 minute walks away (have fun walking at night), they decided to go with a similar look of Higgins armory on the outside instead of the brick like originally planned even though the armory looks hideous now, left field is supposed to have seating on the hill just like the stadium in Pawtucket did but that’s not grown yet but they’re still selling tickets for that area. I seriously question what was the background with these decisions. Can’t forget too that they’ve promised that the stadium would be open for walking through as well if people wanted to exercise when it wasn’t a game day. Its bad now, Memorial Day weekend it’s only going to get worse with full capacity
And the article does point out that they are getting slammed for meals before / after the games. It’s the regular restaurant traffic that is off. The problem isn’t Polar Park, it’s folks that believe they should be able to park right outside their destination. It’s been a Worcester thing forever. In lots of cities big and small, folks park sometimes blocks away and walk to their favorite restaurants, stores, etc.
I will concede that I believe you are correct that a slot parlor may not have been the best use for the property across the street but at this moment in time I see nothing there but a road and the beginnings of a City garage, so I am not convinced at this time that the City's plan is realistic.
Conversely, the WooSox are in a competitive advantage with $175M ball park, financed by the City, which their lease is probably worth 45 cents on the dollar in terms of total construction costs. That is not a bad position to be in when your concessions directly compete with local restaraunts for both patrons and parking.
The excitement of opening day is now behind us and it is apparent that there are parking issues that should have been anticipated well before opening day. It is the City's responsibility to rectify these issue for the tax paying businesses in the Canal District whose investments were creation of the Canal District which the WooSox are now beneficiaries of.
The City missed the mark on this issue immensely!
What a blunder. Vote against anyone running for council that refuses to address this discriminatory tax burden that is only going to accelerate.