Questions loom over Hinchliffe Stadium’s finances: Was it profitable in 2023?

PATERSON — Renovated and much celebrated, historic Hinchliffe Stadium reopened in 2023, after being closed for 25 years, with a menu of events that included minor league baseball games, private youth camps and high school sports.

Even Rutgers University got involved, with a $25,000 sponsorship that paid for signs at the stadium touting the Scarlet Knights football team, and the New York Yankees pledged to donate to Hinchliffe a portion of their ticket sales from their Satchel Paige Bobblehead Night last spring.

Mayor Andre Sayegh has said he hopes Major League Baseball will pick Hinchliffe as the site for one of its “Field of Dreams” games in recognition of Hinchliffe’s status as one of the last remaining ballparks where the Negro Leagues played in the mid-20th century.

But beyond the hoopla, many questions remain about the financial bottom line for the $108 million project — which also included a parking garage and a 75-unit apartment building.

No net profits from 2023 expected

Funded largely with revenue from tens of millions of dollars in public tax credits, the Hinchliffe renovation needed a last-minute infusion of $8 million from New Jersey’s state government and has benefited from a 35-year property tax break from the city of Paterson.

The Hinchliffe lease says the stadium’s owners, Paterson Public Schools, will get 50% of the net profits from its annual operations. But Hinchliffe developer Baye Adofo-Wilson recently said in a text message that he doesn’t expect there will be any net profits for 2023 “given the abbreviated year in service” for the ballpark, which opened in May.

Adofo-Wilson said the stadium operators were still working on their annual audit, an accounting that the lease requires be provided to the Paterson school district within 90 days after the end of the calendar year.

The lease also calls for the creation of an advisory board made up of appointees from the school board, mayor and City Council — a group that is supposed to meet at least once every three months with the developers. But that advisory board has not convened any meetings yet. In fact, no one has been appointed to be on it.

Sayegh, who has staged countless events and press conferences at Hinchliffe in recent years, did not respond when Paterson Press asked to interview him for this story. Sayegh and his staff did not provide any answers to questions about the stadium’s finances.

What do school officials say?

“I knew this would happen,” school board member Valerie Freeman said when told that Hinchliffe’s private operators said the stadium would not have any net profit for 2023.

Freeman said she doesn't trust the financial arrangement. “They’re taking it down to the last penny so they don’t have to pay what they promised us,” she said of the developers. “They used our children to get everything kicked up and running. It’s been so misleading since the inception.”

Aspects of Hinchliffe’s finances remain a public mystery, such as how much the New Jersey Jackals, a minor league baseball team, are paying to use Hinchliffe as their home field.

Freeman said she had requested a copy of the Jackals’ lease with the developers but was told she was not entitled to see it. City and school officials have said the Jackals’ sublease is not a public record because it’s an agreement between two private entities.

Kenneth Simmons, the school board vice president, said he would ask the district’s legal department to pursue an amendment to the Hinchliffe lease that would require the developers to share their subleases with education officials.

Simmons said such a clause was not included in the original lease because no one on the board at the time expected the stadium to be used beyond high school sports and city recreation programs.

“We thought it was just going to be for community events,” Simmons said. “No one foresaw the Jackals.”

But the minor league baseball team didn’t exactly fill Hinchliffe with fans. The Jackals ended 2023 with the lowest attendance in the Frontier League. Their average of 725 people was barely half the 1,377 who attended games for the league’s second-worst team in attendance, the Trois-Rivieres Aigles, who played their home games in Canada, halfway between Montreal and Quebec City.

More from Paterson Press: Why did a Montclair nonprofit group receive $8M for the Hinchliffe Stadium project?

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Concessions contract raises questions, too

The Jackals’ lease isn’t the only agreement involving Hinchliffe that hasn’t been made public. The developers gave the food and beverage concessions contract to a company owned by Vaughn McKoy, who was Sayegh’s business administrator when the mayor set in motion the stadium renovation.

So far, there has been no public disclosure of how much the developers are getting from the concessions contract.

McKoy’s business not only has the rights to sell food and beer at Jackals games inside the stadium, but also will be operating the eateries at the new museum building constructed overlooking the Great Falls. Neither the museum space nor the dining area has opened yet.

Officials at Montclair State University, which received a $5 million donation from a Paterson alumnus to fund the museum, said the exhibition space is scheduled to open in April.

Simmons, from the school board, said the impending audit may provide more information about Hinchliffe’s finances. “We have the ability to examine their books,” he said of the audit.

The school board president, Manny Martinez, said he intends to make sure the lease requirement for an advisory board gets fulfilled.

“That way we can meet with the developers and go over the revenue sharing, the scheduling, everything pertaining to the stadium,” Martinez said.

Councilman Michael Jackson, who has been a fierce critic of Sayegh’s Hinchliffe plan since its inception, was incredulous when told the Hinchliffe developers were not expecting any net profit in 2023. He said public funding for the project should have dramatically reduced the expenses.

“The scandal continues,” Jackson said.

Joe Malinconico is editor of Paterson Press. Email: editor@patersonpress.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson, NJ: Hinchliffe Stadium's finances, profitability questioned