Polar Park ! If Doherty comes close to the Polar Park over runs the folks at City Hall should be run out of town. I forgot, Augustus is already leaving town. Hmmmm?
Went to the game today. Couldn’t help but wish I was standing in the old abandoned parking lot full of weeds and hyperdermic needles.
Common Sense said…
You're assuming that nothing else could have been built on those sites. With Worcester's booming biotech industry maybe a biotech park with hotel, retail and housing would have been a possibility? That could have created maybe 2,000 jobs and generated a ton of real estate taxes. I would argue that it would have a larger economic impact on the Canal District than a seasonal stadium.
Nobody is saying that Polar Park is not a great experience.
The question is the cost and let us not forget how this was sold to the taxpayers as being "revenue neutral".
In Wormtown's world the cost is irrelevant, he only looks at the benefit.
You can't run a business like that.
Common Sense said…
Just read that the world's first airport for flying cars and drones opened in the UK. It is supposed to be the model for hundreds more worldwide. With its location in the center of NE, ORH would be an ideal location for that. Look into this Mr. Davis!!
Common Sense said…
Read another interesting article about how hypersonic planes are going to revolutionize the travel industry. Can you imagine hoping on a plane at ORH and being in London in 90 minutes. You could meet with a business client there and be home to have dinner with your family. Maybe 3-5 years away if they can develop the technology to make it affordable for passengers.
Anonymous said…
Not a good day for JetBlue at all at ORH. Mid day turn canceled, evening JFK flight delayed until after midnight, Fort Lauderdale return flight expected to arrive after midnight, morning flight didn’t leave until 10:15, almost 3 hours late. Flight to FLL left 40 minutes late but probably arrived close to on time.
In other news, this project that the city is expecting to do to make Polar Park pay for itself is still in line to fail, even if everything goes right. How many times has plans changed with the design and what’s going there? When the Woosox have those nights where they “celebrate” neighboring towns like Boylston, Rutland, Paxton, Leominster, etc. those people from those towns/city’s can go there and enjoy the fact that their tax dollars aren’t being used on a stadium that Worcester is spending tons of money on. I think Polar Park will cost $200 million. That sounds like a crazy number, but they still haven’t finished everything yet and did do changes to the stadium after year 1 which they’ll probably end up adding to the total cost of the stadium. For all of the moving of those dining cars and equipments, plus the video board in right field (who knows what they did with the old scoreboard that was there in year 1, would’ve been nice to donate it to a high school team but probably not) plus all other construction that has been done around the ball park. That $160,000,000 price tag was set in May 2021 and think about what’s been done to the stadium since then. Remember too what the stadium what the $80,000,000 was suppose to get us? A brand new stadium with brick facade and the stadium was going to look great but we got a building that was suppose to look like Higgins Armory which is practically just steel on the outside. When have the last time you ever heard someone say that the Higgins Armory building looks nice?
Don’t forget too how much the city has lost in year one. John Creedon (owner of the Bravehearts) mentioned it, the Woosox need a lot of people to attend the games to make money but failed in year one whereas the Bravehearts only need 750 people per game to make money off of it. I’ll spend my $22 on mini golf, easy access to autographs for family’s, a seat anywhere in the stadium, all you can eat food as well as unlimited soda, and free parking at a Bravehearts game because I already have to give the Woosox and Polar Park money from my taxes so why give them more? I still get to watch fireworks on Friday Nights there as well.
Where has the development in that area for the past 50 years? It didn’t exist and would never exist without the ballpark. Sorry people.
Anonymous said…
Where was the zoning change for 50 years?
Anonymous said…
Mr. Wormtown, I disagree heartily that development would not have occurred but for the ballpark being the incentive for developers.
If that were true, why did the city have to give away its tax base with giant TIFs? It even gave a gigantic one away over on Shrewsbury St for a market rate residential project in maybe the most economically vibrant kart of the city, let alone all of the free money the city showered on the Canal District.
Why are the unions picketing the Madison Properties site every day? I though that the ballpark district was supposed to be awesome for working people of Worcester? Granted, if you have a job you do get to enjoy a great fan experience. No argument with you there, but is it worth $hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars (the way over budget cost of the ballpark, plus the no taxes paid by the WooSox billionaire owner and the essentially free rent, plus all of thenTIFs given to 100% of the nearby development announced)
Anonymous said…
The Canal District grew the last 5-10 years on Green/Harding/Water Streets. What makes anyone think it would not have expanded westward behind Green Street.
Common Sense said…
I think Joe Petty and Ed Augustus were trying to cement their legacies so they made sure the team moved here despite the financial hardship it might end up costing the City in the future.
Common Sense said…
I think the developer of the project across from the park already had plans to move ahead with the project even before there was any talk of the team moving to Worcester. The land that the stadium now sits on would have eventually been developed, although it might have taken five years before that happened. I will say that I was in the Canal District before the game last Thursday. It appeared that a lot of the restaurants were being patronized by people that were going to the game. I don't think you would see that kind of business on a weekday if the stadium wasn't there. The question is if that's worth $175 million in public financing?
Anonymous said…
Didn't Augustus say that the City would make tens of millions from the ball park some time ago? I haven't heard that claim in quite a while. With regards to investing $175 million, the City should have invested the money on Burncoat, repairing streets etc.
Common Sense said…
We were told that the stadium would host revenue generating events like concerts. Doesn't appear that will happen this Summer as there have been no announcements. The only thing I've heard about is a food truck event and some high school baseball games.
Anonymous said…
Common sense, are you referring to the high school baseball games where it was free to get into and the city lost money doing it because they acted like it was a Woosox games with all staff being there for a preseason “warmup” before the Woosox season began so everyone knew what to do? They’ve been hosting a lot of 5k’s but is that actually making money? I can’t remember the event, but I believe either the high school baseball games or the Assumption doubleheader, it was free but everyone got a $2 credit, so that’s more loss money there. The high school games had 6 schools play against each other, they couldn’t even get all 5 to play at Polar Park (Worcester Tech did not).
In other news about flights, American cancelled from ORH yesterday and today. JetBlue canceled last night and early am flight. Adam Webster (voice of the Worcester Railers) even posted about it on Facebook because he was suppose to fly home from I believe North Carolina and he got stranded. Luckily, the airline gave him a hotel room for the night but I’ve noticed this trend a lot more lately. Third person I’ve heard from in the past week that has had problems with JetBlue. Hopefully what happened in April doesn’t happen again.
Anonymous said…
Augustus' legacy will be leaving the City burdened with a ton of loans which we will need to pay. He maxed out the credit card and left town before the bill came due. Besides building the highest costing minor league ballpark in the country I can't think of another accomplishment. I will say it must not have been easy to manage the City during the pandemic BUT that was only 2 of his 10 years as manager and I would have thought I could recall another accomplishment but I could not.
Common Sense said…
I think most of the high schools are having their graduations at the park, but the funny thing is they were previously held at the city owned DCU Center. So no new revenue is being generated. Augustus did get the skateboard park going so the teens can hang out and smoke weed. Also, he got some pretty lights put under the bridge for $250k.
Anonymous said…
You just reminded me of something that pissed me off last year at this time. The high schools held their graduations at Polar Park but what was not widely reported was the WooSox charged the City to hold them there. Another part of the great deal the City made. Getting charged to use the building you built.
Anonymous said…
High School Graduations are luckily back at DCU center. Woosox too picky with what they required there at Polar Park involving shoes, where to walk, etc. Better idea to have it at DCU center, last year South High couldn’t go on the field because of rain so everyone sat on the concourse and people watched them walk across the stage on the screen in left.
Anonymous said…
In airport news. JetBlue flight to ORH from Fort Lauderdale not expected to leave FLL until around midnight. That’s 4 hours late. Makes you wonder why not just use a different type of aircraft at that point or use a different E190.
Common Sense said…
Can't imagine Mike O'Brien negotiating such a horrible deal. He would have walked. When Joe Petty runs for state senate he's going to tout that he helped bring the team here. In fact, he insisted that he make the announcement instead of the city manager.
Anonymous said…
I do not think O'Brien would have given away everything if he was negotiating the deal for the City. I just read an article in the T$G about a meeting with residents and businesses from the Canal District and have to give Augustus some credit. With just a couple of weeks left on the job he could of found many reasons not to attend such a meeting but he went. Unfortunately the problem he contributed in creating, putting so many baseball fans and their cars in such a confine space,will not be solved with the garage but at least he showed up.
Anonymous said…
You missed one unanswered question from the article. The meeting was the first that the City (Augustus and staff) had with the Canal District since the ballpark opened but how many meetings did the City (Augustus and staff) have with the WooSox during this time. I bet many and they sucked more out of the City that we will never know about.
Anonymous said…
I’ll say it again. If the city is in a good financial position after the ballpark deal it is all that you would be hearing about. The silence, however, is deafening.
We don’t know the full cost. We don’t know how much of a deficit there is in taxes from the new DIF district. We don’t know that the WooSox won’t be laying taxes.
We do know about all of the TIFS being handed out like candy to people building apartments. We do know that the WooSoxx pay less in rent for a $160,000,000 (and counting!) stadium than any tiny barbershop in the city. The rent is all backloaded to 25 years from now! Talk about putting yourself in a hostage situation: the WooSox will announce that they will move unless (1) the city forgoes all of the rent it never collected that is then due, and (2) the city spends another $100,000,000 in the renovations that will undoubtedly be required by then.
Is there anyone in city leadership on this deal that ever held a real job?
Anonymous said…
But there is "no abandoned parking lots with weeds and hyperdermic needles" . If that is the only response to a comment you know it is a bad deal. One final comment, O'Brien most likely would have made the WooSox pay taxes. Wasn't he the City Manager who got some of the colleges to make payments?
Anonymous said…
The ball park is built and we know it is somewhere between 60%-75% over budget and there is nothing we can do about it, except being told what the final cost is. Now we need to find out exactly how much this revenue neutral project is costing us every year. I was looking at the City's budget and capital budget (which has estimated payments on the loans) and I think that currently this revenue neutral project is costing us $3,500,000.00 this year and $4,000,000.00 next year because of the delayed development. The city's budgets do not make it easy to figure this out.
Comments
If Doherty comes close to the Polar Park over runs the folks at City Hall should be run out of town.
I forgot, Augustus is already leaving town. Hmmmm?
The question is the cost and let us not forget how this was sold to the taxpayers as being "revenue neutral".
In Wormtown's world the cost is irrelevant, he only looks at the benefit.
You can't run a business like that.
In other news, this project that the city is expecting to do to make Polar Park pay for itself is still in line to fail, even if everything goes right. How many times has plans changed with the design and what’s going there? When the Woosox have those nights where they “celebrate” neighboring towns like Boylston, Rutland, Paxton, Leominster, etc. those people from those towns/city’s can go there and enjoy the fact that their tax dollars aren’t being used on a stadium that Worcester is spending tons of money on. I think Polar Park will cost $200 million. That sounds like a crazy number, but they still haven’t finished everything yet and did do changes to the stadium after year 1 which they’ll probably end up adding to the total cost of the stadium. For all of the moving of those dining cars and equipments, plus the video board in right field (who knows what they did with the old scoreboard that was there in year 1, would’ve been nice to donate it to a high school team but probably not) plus all other construction that has been done around the ball park. That $160,000,000 price tag was set in May 2021 and think about what’s been done to the stadium since then. Remember too what the stadium what the $80,000,000 was suppose to get us? A brand new stadium with brick facade and the stadium was going to look great but we got a building that was suppose to look like Higgins Armory which is practically just steel on the outside. When have the last time you ever heard someone say that the Higgins Armory building looks nice?
Don’t forget too how much the city has lost in year one. John Creedon (owner of the Bravehearts) mentioned it, the Woosox need a lot of people to attend the games to make money but failed in year one whereas the Bravehearts only need 750 people per game to make money off of it. I’ll spend my $22 on mini golf, easy access to autographs for family’s, a seat anywhere in the stadium, all you can eat food as well as unlimited soda, and free parking at a Bravehearts game because I already have to give the Woosox and Polar Park money from my taxes so why give them more? I still get to watch fireworks on Friday Nights there as well.
If that were true, why did the city have to give away its tax base with giant TIFs? It even gave a gigantic one away over on Shrewsbury St for a market rate residential project in maybe the most economically vibrant kart of the city, let alone all of the free money the city showered on the Canal District.
Why are the unions picketing the Madison Properties site every day? I though that the ballpark district was supposed to be awesome for working people of Worcester? Granted, if you have a job you do get to enjoy a great fan experience. No argument with you there, but is it worth
$hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars (the way over budget cost of the ballpark, plus the no taxes paid by the WooSox billionaire owner and the essentially free rent, plus all of thenTIFs given to 100% of the nearby development announced)
In other news about flights, American cancelled from ORH yesterday and today. JetBlue canceled last night and early am flight. Adam Webster (voice of the Worcester Railers) even posted about it on Facebook because he was suppose to fly home from I believe North Carolina and he got stranded. Luckily, the airline gave him a hotel room for the night but I’ve noticed this trend a lot more lately. Third person I’ve heard from in the past week that has had problems with JetBlue. Hopefully what happened in April doesn’t happen again.
Augustus did get the skateboard park going so the teens can hang out and smoke weed. Also, he got some pretty lights put under the bridge for $250k.
We don’t know the full cost. We don’t know how much of a deficit there is in taxes from the new DIF district. We don’t know that the WooSox won’t be laying taxes.
We do know about all of the TIFS being handed out like candy to people building apartments. We do know that the WooSoxx pay less in rent for a $160,000,000 (and counting!) stadium than any tiny barbershop in the city. The rent is all backloaded to 25 years from now! Talk about putting yourself in a hostage situation: the WooSox will announce that they will move unless (1) the city forgoes all of the rent it never collected that is then due, and (2) the city spends another $100,000,000 in the renovations that will undoubtedly be required by then.
Is there anyone in city leadership on this deal that ever held a real job?