Pawtucket soccer stadium moves ahead on McKee tiebreaking vote

It's game on for professional soccer in Pawtucket again.

Gov. Dan McKee cast the tiebreaking vote on a deadlocked Rhode Island Commerce Corporation Board Monday to approve a reworked public financing plan for a $124-million professional soccer stadium on the Seekonk River.

McKee chairs the Board that oversees most state business incentives and pushed ahead with the stadium plan despite not knowing how much the entire stadium-centered "Tidewater Landing" development will ultimately cost Rhode Island to complete.

The 6-5 vote (with two abstentions) allows the state to dedicate the proceeds of a $36 million bond — most of which was previously ticketed for adjacent housing and commercial development — to the stadium alone. Total public commitments to the stadium, including tax credits, state and city funding, is estimated at around $60 million.

Pawtucket soccer stadium: Cost rises to $124 million due to supply chain issues, inflation

Despite the McKee administration taking a month to renegotiate details of the plan and ease concerns about the project, Board members had serious reservations about whether it is a wise public investment.

Their biggest worry: now that state funding has been shifted to the stadium, how much more public money will be needed to complete the apartments, shops, restaurants, riverwalks, pedestrian bridge and other infrastructure first proposed in 2019.

With nearly all of the public financing going to the stadium itself, the McKee administration is planning to tap recently approved public money for affordable housing, and possibly for transportation, to complete the project.

Exactly how much more they'll need with inflation high and interest rates climbing is unknown. Neither the state nor stadium developer Fortuitous Partners has provided an estimate.

For its part, Fortuitous plans to spend $78.5 million on Tidewater Landing, including $45.5 in investor equity, $31.5 million in private loans and a $1.5 million food service deal.

Tidewater Landing development

The Commerce Board approved public funding for the Tidewater Landing development last year, but several board members said they had done so with the planned housing and commercial development at the forefront and the stadium an "amenity."

"Now we are doing the amenity first and what we think is more of the core to the development later," said Bernard Buonanno III, one of the board members who voted no.

Buonanno asked whether Fortuitous would need another $20 million or $100 million in state dollars to build the rest of the project.

State Commerce Secretary Liz Tanner said it was too early to know.

"We know where the economic benefit is and it is not necessarily in the stadium and we have known that all along," Board member Donna Sams said, pointing to the importance of the residential and commercial pieces of the project.

Fortuitous Partners' Dan Krober said the developer planned to go out to bid for the housing part of the project in around nine months and wouldn't know what it would cost until those bids came in.

To try to make sure taxpayers aren't left completely on the hook for the project, public money is only paid out once the stadium is completed and Tanner said they are negotiating a series of benchmarks for non-stadium development which, if not met, meant the state cold claw back its money.

But the benchmarks were not agreed to before the vote.

The latest changes to the development plan include eliminating office space in the post-stadium phase of development and replacing it with between 80 and 100 new units of housing. That would bring the residential development up to 500 new units.

Asked what would happen if the Board waited to get more information clarity on the non-stadium development, Krober said Fortuitous needed to move now and "time is evaporating.".

"Obviously we all know Interest rates are rising quickly and inflation is still rising. W are trying to lock in our rates," Krober. We are ready to go. We have been hiring employees. We are ready to launch the brand of this team, which we plan to do very shortly. This project is ready."

He said that Fortuitous has spent heavily on the non-stadium side of the project and agreed that investors cannot get the return they needs from the stadium alone.

"If we are not able to develop this at this site under the conditions that we have, no one is ever developing anything in this state ever again," he said. "We have land at a discount. We have public infrastructure dollars... We don't think we need $100 million to support it."

Are there enough soccer fans?

Another concern among board members was whether enough fans would buy tickets to matches in the USL Championship, the second tier of American professional soccer, to pay for the stadium part of the project.

Convention Sports and Leisure International, the consultants hired by the state to look at the plan described the attendance Fortuitous assumes to repay its construction debt as "slightly aggressive, but achievable."

A state Commerce Corporation presentation on new stadium projects lists the $124 million estimated cost of the 10,500-seat Pawtucket stadium the most expensive for a facility serving a team in the USL Championship, the second tier of American soccer. (Officials noted that a stadium being built in Des Moines, Iowa is experiencing similar cost overruns and could reach a similar price tag.)

By contrast, the Trinity Health Stadium in Hartford, which opened in 2019 with 5,500 seats, cost only $14 million.

Buonanno said Fortuitous is forecasting 7,600 fans per game at the new Pawtucket stadium and the USL Championship average is around 4,000 per game.

"It's just such an important consideration, attendance is almost everything," Buonanno said. "Because if we are off by a couple thousand attendance this model doesn't work."

Jay Lenhardt of CSL said they thought Pawtucket could draw 7,600 fans per game because of "the quality of the stadium."

"The vast majority are not playing in a state-of-the art stadium," Lenhardt said. "They are either in a baseball stadium or in a second or third tier stadium.. We also see the market dynamic here and the quality of the ownership group."

After the meeting, McKee said he wasn't thinking about what will happen if fans don't show up.

"I'm not thinking about that. I have a very high expectation that this is going to be built," McKee told reporters after the vote.

"I am not walking away from Pawtucket," he said, referring to the ill-fated Pawtucket Red Sox ballpark plan. "That was done a few years back."

Fortuitous Partners' Brett Johnson did not take questions after the vote, but before leaving thanked McKee and said he looked forward to a groundbreaking "very soon."

The Commerce Board members voting in favor of the new stadium plan were: McKee, George Nee, Michael Solomon, Brenda Dann-Messier, Dave Chenevert and Liz Catucci.

Voting no were: Mary Jo Kaplan, Vanessa Toledo-Vickers, Buonanno, Michael McNally and Sams.

Karl Wadensten and William Stone abstained.

panderson@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7384

On Twitter: @PatrickAnderso_

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This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI professional soccer stadium moves ahead on McKee's tiebreaking vote