The Baltimore Orioles owners have been hinting at getting taxpayer-funded upgrades to Camden Yards for seven years now, and with the team’s lease now expiring at the end of 2023 — it was supposed to expire right now, but the two sides agreed to kick it back a couple of years during the pandemic — talks are heating up again. And after the state of Maryland got snookered into paying the entire $110 million construction cost back when building the stadium in 1992, state officials are determined not to let that happen again ha ha ha ha no, of course they’re looking at piling even more public money onto the Angelos family in exchange for a lease extension. Per the Baltimore Sun:
Now the Orioles are seeking a new investment from the state — both the team and the stadium authority say it would be premature to discuss specifics — so Camden Yards can cater to a new generation of fans accustomed to mingling and activity rather than just sitting and watching the game.
Ah, yes, that new generation of fans who pay to go to sporting events so they can not watch the sporting events, but instead hang out at wine bars or something. I don’t even know anymore whether the new generation is meant to be millennials or Gen Z (don’t the latter canonically hate mingling, unless it’s on a Twitch chat stream?), but “Our sports stadium is obsolete because it’s only good for watching sports in” is officially part of the playbook now, there’s no turning back.
As for what the younguns are demanding, it apparently also involves something called “loge seating”:
The team says it is confident of reaching a new agreement that preserves the nearly 30-year-old stadium’s charm but allows for upgrades that could include more social spaces, a sportsbook and loge seating. Loge seating, which can take various forms, is in an outdoor space at the field or club level in which small groups of fans sit together and share a common concession area nearby.
I’ve been following stadium and arena design for a while now, and this is the first time I’ve ever heard “loge” to mean this, which is more traditionally known as “box” seating, or maybe just “seats,” since sitting together and sharing a common concession area is what most people have always done at ballgames. But I guess Camden Yards already has “box” seats but doesn’t have “loge” seats, so it needs some of those? Because the kids today?
Neither the Orioles owners nor Maryland officials are so much as hinting at how much renovations would cost or how much taxpayers would be asked to foot the bill for — see above re “premature to discuss specifics” — but they are very much already setting up the rationale for a sizable ask:
But overall, the state says it has earned a $330 million return on its investment in Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium, the 23-year-old home of the Ravens, whose lease is up in 2027. That’s based, the stadium authority said, on $1 billion in team-related tax revenues since the stadiums began operating, minus $670 million in debt service on the bonds.
The Sun didn’t break down that $1 billion in revenues, but suffice to say it’s worth raising one if not both eyebrows at. The same article reveals that the Orioles pay an average of $6.8 million a year in rent, which over 30 years only comes to $204 million. (The article doesn’t mention that in exchange for receiving rent payments, the state is on the hook for all maintenance and operations costs at the stadium.) That would leave at least $800 million to be covered by taxes, and since the Orioles don’t pay property taxes (since Camden Yards is owned by the state, see above re: original snookering) that must be entirely out of sales and income taxes, on the theory that without the Orioles that money would disappear from the local economy, which noooooo, that’s not how it works at all.
In any event, in order to count Orioles tax money as a net gain, one has to assume that the Orioles would be leaving without an upgraded stadium, which is tough when the Angeloses have shown no interest in threatening to leave. But, as we’ve seen in Buffalo recently, that’s no obstacle when you really need an excuse to throw money at a team:
“We want to create an environment that makes the team want to stay and play its games at Oriole Park at Camden Yards,” said Michael Frenz, the stadium authority’s executive director, in an interview as lease negotiations continue…
There is no guarantee the club wouldn’t be sold to an owner less committed to the city. The Baltimore Sun reported last year that at least three people have shown interest in assembling bidding groups if the family decided to sell.
As a result, the memory of the Colts’ middle-of-the-night departure from Baltimore and the possibility of a sale loom over the lease negotiations.
Ah, the Colts’ middle-of-the-night departure. There are those who would say that the lesson there is to be sure to seize the team by eminent domain before it packs up the moving vans, but those people don’t get to work at the Maryland Stadium Authority.
As we discussed here when this last came up a couple of years ago, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to upgrade a 30-year-old stadium; what you want to be sure you do, or your elected officials do, is to keep a close eye on the lease details, only approve things that are genuinely needed and not just “stuff the team could use to make more money if it doesn’t have to pay for it,” and be aware that you have leverage when there are no other cities of comparable size for the team to move to. And remember that leases can always be extended — this very one just was! — so 2023 isn’t a drop-dead deadline by any means. There’s got to be someone in the state of Maryland willing to be the person shouting into the wind about this; an elected official would be ideal, but a journalist or regular citizen with a big enough Twitter following wouldn’t be bad, either. The important thing is to start asking questions now, because once an Orioles renovation deal is presented as a fait accompli, it’ll be all over for another 30 years but for the enraged shouting.
It’s a pet peeve of mine when the papers and the pundits use the phrases like “the investment by the public” to describe stuff like this. The most annoying part about this is that the framing is so obvious, and the intended result (and the audience) even more so.
It has become clear to me that the only way most sports teams are making money these days is from TV contracts and public subsidies for new stadiums or stadium upgrades. They clearly don’t care if the stadiums are more than half-empty anymore.
It’s not on their upgrade list, but making the left field power alley deeper might save them some money on pitcher attrition.
Looks like somebody’s listening to you!
https://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles/bs-sp-orioles-alter-camden-yards-left-field-dimensions-20220111-s2fesn2obrcqtmmjamgckml76m-story.html
Loge seating? Who knew I was on the cutting edge sitting in that section at Shea in the 80s?
I remember a couple of renovations ago, the dolphins converted the first few rows of the end zone seating (above one of the dugouts when the marlins were still a tenant) into “the loge”…it made very little sense, and alienated a couple of their most ardent and well-known fans, because the price got jacked up for the privilege of sitting not all that close to the field, exactly as they had before.
The fans wound up being “relocated” to keep them happy. But it was a stupid idea that started a path of pricing our regular fans.