Pawsox being sold to Red Sox Ownership

singaporesoxfan

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8slim said:
Springfield officially talking to the Sox now:  
 
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/2015/10/13/springfield-mayor-opens-stadium-talks-with-pawsox/jN8VoYivfBE1iiir8SnPqN/story.html
 
This things has turned into such a strange situation.  I'm waiting for it to be settled with a NESN reality show where 8 New England cities compete to win the right to publicly finance a new AA stadium.
 
I wonder how attached the Sox are to having the farm team within minor-league shuttle distance i.e. in New England itself, or whether they'd entertain competition from further afield. Seems like less than half of MLB teams have their farm teams nearby, with the really close ones being the Sox, Blue Jays (in Buffalo), and the Braves (essentially in a suburb of Atlanta). Then there are teams like the Mets with their farm team in Vegas or the Twins with their farm team in upstate NY.
 

smastroyin

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The Boston Red Sox do not own the Pawtucket Red Sox.  So they can go wherever they want, and then the affiliation deals are separate. 
 
Obviously if the PawSox owners decide to go far afield, they may lose their affiliation and the Sox will look for another team, and that team may then choose to move closer, or whatever.  But they aren't directly impacted.
 
What is impacted is the idea of whether the team has more value as a Red Sox affiliate within range of Red Sox fans (presumably fans would care more, etc., but I don't know if this is actually proven), which has more influence on whether they would move out of New England.
 

Lose Remerswaal

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Rovin Romine said:
I never really understood why municipalities don't simply insist on being paid back, dollar for dollar with interest.  Give the new team a good deal in exchange for a long lease, but get paid.  Instead there's always some kind of fairy tale about the general economy picking up, or a shady parking garage deal.  
 
Unless you're pulling from outside the city (ideally outside the state), you're not going to magically get people to spend more money locally than they already do.   A Providence stadium will be largely full of people from in and around Providence, who are spending their Friday night money at the restaurant near the stadium instead of the restaurant near their house.  
 
Seems like the average attendance isn't going to be greater than 10K per home game.  http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=l_att&lid=117&sid=l117  How many of those will be out of towers or out of staters?
 
Granted, there's the train from Boston, so Providence could run some kind of package deal to import Bostonians on the weekend. . .
Ever try to find a hotel room in Pawtucket when the PawSox were at home?
 

Papo The Snow Tiger

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Isn't Springfield in the "team formerly known as the New Britain Rock Cats" territory? One of the justifications Hartford used for building the new stadium was that the Rock Cats would leave the state, and if they'd move to Springfield the owners would still own the Hartford market and no affiliated minor league team could come to New Britain.
 

P'tucket rhymes with...

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That's a lot of time, money and negative publicity for a package that's likely to be only incrementally better than what they would have gotten had they simply pushed the $65 million renovation cost from the get-go. I suspect they were genuinely going for the big payday and got caught off-guard by the community pushback, the price tag Brown put on their land, and the absence of any financing-laden offers from any of the other competing cities.
 

Brohamer of the Gods

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The story in the Pro Jo makes it seem like Pawtucket is low on the list, but it will be their home for five years so might as well make the best of it.
 

Orange Julia

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One of the spokespersons for the Providence deal just got hired by the Providence City Council as Chief of Staff. You might remember her as Buddy Cianci's campaign manager for his most recent run for Mayor, as well as someone he kept on his staff when he was still mayor... So maybe in five years, this plan for Providence will have more support in the city. Who knows.
 

Brohamer of the Gods

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I agree. There is probably enough land along the Airport Connector, which is kinda in the same location. But beyond easy highway access, I don't see the attraction. Would be convenient for me to get to a game though.
 

smastroyin

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Let's not forget that I also correctly identified the parcel they would want in Providence, and the public outcry over loss of the park, and the fact that the city would have to threaten eminent domain to get Brown down to a reasonable price for their continuing ed parcel (OK, I didn't predict that but it was the next step if they had moved forward with that plan). I'm not often right, so I like to take credit where I can.

As far as the Apex site, the owners of that parcel have bought a few other parcels in the area (specifically the George's Games building) and are making noise about street abandonment. Word on the street is they are hoping to attract a Super Wal-Mart or Target, which requires as much acreage (thanks to parking) as a stadium. But I'm not sure how successful they will be given the fact that there is already a saturation of those places in the area. If they had gotten in before Wal-Mart developed the Charles St. location in Providence, they'd have had a better shot.
 

Brohamer of the Gods

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We discussed this earlier, but Apex would be nice with the water view. Also, regarding the mayor's comment on building a hotel next to McCoy, I'm not sure how large a structure that ground will support as it is all fill.
 

Leon Trotsky

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Thank the Gods in heaven the Apex site is even being discussed. With Isle Brewers Guild on one side and a new McCoy on the other downtown Pawtucket might finally get some traction. Hell, even a Target or Walmart would be good.

I wouldn't worry about fill. There are numerous fairly cost effective ways of increasing bearing capacity of fill. The type of hotel that could be supported there would be pretty lightweight construction anyway.
 

smastroyin

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It probably helped push them along when a deal was closed for two big parcels around the corner. My guess is that they hoped no-one would show interest in the area and the state would get desperate in another year Or two.
 

Brohamer of the Gods

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The word from my snitches is that the Mayor of Pawtucket has a meeting with Paw Sox ownership on Monday/ early next week. No idea if it is a substantive meeting, or just on-going chatter, but definitely a sign of detente between the two sides.