Fiscal 2023 DIF Account

Naming & Advertising Rights in Lease

 link to lease


Start Page 96 of 135


Location                                        Landlord         Tenant

Ballpark                                                0                100%

Left Field Building                               0                100%

Ballpark District                                50%                50%

Other City Advertising                      50%               50%



Rockland Naming rights to Picket Park:   Although owned and maintained by the taxpayers.    The $80,000 is split between the City of Worcester and WooSox.


Cannibas signs from poles imagine will also be split.     


If the WooSox sell Cannibas signs at Tatnuck Square they will get 50% of that?????  


This could be the best lease ever signed by a tenant.    


   

Comments

Anonymous said…
The other day you had a post that contained an email from another economist. If you sent the lease and the financials do you think he might review and comment on the deal the City made. It seems like you turn over a rock and something comes out but are you seeing all the rocks? I assume that guy might be more familiar with these types of deals. Just a thought.
Common Sense said…
I feel bad for the kids at Dean College. Easy Ed will probably double their tuition next year and give half to Larry Lucuino.
Worst deal ever!!! I'm beginning to think there was some side deal. No competent CEO could work out such a horrible deal for his constituents. If we see Ed tooling around town in a new exotic car we'll know why.

Anonymous said…
Competent? It is easy to spend someone else's money and when I say someone else I mean us taxpayers money.
Anonymous said…
Rumor has it the WooSox are negotiating a naming rights deal on the nips canisters you had a post on with Fireball.
Anonymous said…
Nah. Its probably more 90 sox 10 city. This lease was back when the park was supposed cost $116 mil , upfront payment by sox of 6 mil and all the attached developments were on guaranteed. How do you think the discussions went in Eds head as landlord vs city???
Anonymous said…
Augustus wanted to land the WooSox no matter the cost and the advertising is just another cost buried in the lease. I can only imagine how much more money the WooSox have made in coming to Worcester. Attendance and food and beer prices are up compared to Woonsocket. They seem to have the payment for naming the ball park and now we find out they get half of the advertising. What else is buried in the lease. Let's not forget they are not paying taxes.
Anonymous said…
The city should have deferred all deal term decisions to a,seasoned negatory that lives in the dreaded private sector. That person wouldn’t be in a rush to pick the Pom poms and wave them to hide the horrible financials.

The city council is woefully inadequate to the task of getting g tot he bottom of the potential severe financial hit to city taxpayers. That, or the grip on the Pom poms and virtue signaling about things that it has no power over and doing dumb things like banning gas stations takes up way too much time.

Why do we even have a city council?

I feel bad for Eric Batista. He is a genuinely decent man who loves the city and diving into the boring details like potholes, etc. Atista got left holding the bag of incompetent loss that ORH is deal currently represents. I hope that I’m incotprrect or that the city can turn thip around before it hits the iceberg and we get massive tax increases
Anonymous said…
I don't know Batista but I feel bad for him. O'Brien left for Augustus a City on a solid financial footing after navigating the City thru the housing crisis. Augustus served during good financial times with the financial footing O'Brien put into place, then came a pandemic. Batista now needs to navigate thru one of the worst financial times, inflation rates at 40 year highs and a specter of a recession and large liabilities Augustus racked up. I hope he has the abilities that O'Brien had because he may need them.
Common Sense said…
I just read the City is going to spend taxpayer money to hire an outside firm to conduct the search for a new city manager.
Doesn't the City have an HR Department that can handle this? Same with this new master plan they're going to spend a ton of money on. Don't we have people in the Economic Development Department that are capable of this? I remember when the City spent $250,000 on the last master plan in 1987. I don't think any of those ideas were implemented. Contact colleges in Worcester with MBA programs. I bet they would do it for free. Clark has probably the best Urban Geography program in the country. I bet you could get them to do the master plan for free I was up at ORH today. The roads around the terminal are not in good shape. Airport Drive could also use re-paving.
Common Sense said…
Didn't the City pay like $200,000 to hire the consultants that said the project would be revenue nutruel? Didn't they help negotiate the deal that gives the team 50-90% of the naming right money for parcels owned by the taxpayers. Money well spent!!
Common Sense said…
On the way down from the airport I passed by the athletic fields at the corner of Mill St. and Airport Dr. The baseball fields and the basketball courts were completly empty. I can't imagine that happening when I was a youth. Seems like today's kids are content sitting at home playing video games and texting their friends. Probably why the child obesity rate is so high and kids feel awkward with face to face interactions.
Anonymous said…
Read Ray Mariano's opinion piece in the Telegram about the City Managers attempt to control the flow of public information. Although he does not mention Augustus' name directly he implies this type of censuring of information has been occurring for years. The City attempts to control information to cover issues. Polar Park is an example of this. When anyone questions the deal, the financial analysis etc they are labeled as negative. I recall that a comment on one of your posts stated something similar about this blog.
Just because Augustus says the overall Polar Park project will make millions of the dollars does not make it so, show us. Either they assume we will believe it because they said it or the assume we will forget, so I ask that you continue to follow up on this because they seem to have scared off the Worcester Business Journal.
This project is not like any other project I can recall in the City. Normally the City just gives tax reductions for businesses. For Polar Park the City built their facility, the ball park. Once the City admits they have a financial problem in meeting the assurances they gave us that the project they have solutions: 1) have the WooSox pay real estate taxes (I read the lease posted and "PILOT" is an option in the lease even though they should be paying taxes and 2) renegotiate the tax reduction deals with the developer.
The City needs to open its eyes, realize their promise to not effect taxes is not working and cure the matter with the options discribed.
Anonymous said…
Comment to the last comment, I think the articles misquoted Augustus. When he said Polar Park was going to making $10,000,000.00 the reporters inadvertently dropped the second half of the sentence which was "for the WooSox".