Orioles release new lease deal that isn’t a lease deal at all, with unknown added public costs

Baltimore Orioles management and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced their new Camden Yards lease deal on Friday as promised, and … it turned out not to be a lease deal at all:

Instead of a lease that will keep the team in Baltimore, the Orioles, Gov. Wes Moore’s administration and the Maryland Stadium Authority said Friday they have agreed to a “memorandum of understanding” — essentially an agreement on some issues and a promise to continue working toward a long-term lease.

The “memo of understanding” is not binding, but the sides say it’s all in the lawyers’ hands now and the focus should be back on the diamond for the playoff push.

Oooookay. So what exactly is in this non-binding MOU that is all over except for the lawyers hashing out, you know, stuff? Neither the O’s nor Moore’s office released any of the actual language, either, instead resorting to a summary that included:

• The lease extension, once it exists, will run for 30 years until 2054, with the option (on the team’s part, presumably, but this wasn’t specified) for two five-year extensions.
• “A 99-year development rights agreement for the areas surrounding the ballpark, including the Warehouse and Camden Station, to energize and revitalize the Camden Yards complex.” The Orioles will pay $94 million in rent for this, over 99 years.
• Shifting operations and management costs (currently about $6.5 million) from the state to the Orioles, though the state will make up part of this by paying the Orioles $3.3 million a year toward a “safety and repair fund.”
• Though not mentioned in the press release, Orioles owners the Angelos family will presumably now get to unlock the $600 million and maybe more in the future from a “revolving fund” in renovation money that the state approved last year.

How bad a deal is this for the public? Who the hell knows! The acreage of the redevelopment area surrounding Camden Yards isn’t specifically spelled out, for one thing (though see below), so we have no idea if $950,000 a year in rent is a reasonable fee or an outright giveaway on par with the Los Angeles Angels‘ failed land grab. If the Angeloses will be paying “rent,” that implies that the land in question will be owned by the state, which further implies that the team owners will be absolved from paying property taxes on their new development whatever it is, but again, few actual details of what hasn’t actually been signed yet have been revealed.

The MOU itself was finally posted by the Baltimore Banner (whose tagline isn’t “The Last Remaining Baltimore News Source” but probably should be), and a few more details can be gleaned from that:

• The Orioles owners will absolved of paying any rent on their stadium, though it’s unclear how much that currently amounts to.
• In addition to the $3.3 million a year toward “safety and repair,” the state will kick in $1 million a year to a “capital improvements and repair reserve fund” as well as up to $1 million a year to a “emergency reserve fund,” depending on how fast that latter fund gets used up.
• The development area around the stadium includes “all areas north of Lee Street currently owned by MSA on the Camden Yards site, except for Lot A,” for which the team owners will pay $1.5 million a year for the first five years, then $500,000 a year for the next 25, then an amount starting at $750,000 a year and escalating 1% a year for the last 69 years. I don’t have the math this morning to come up with a present value figure for that — maybe around $20-30 million? — but without a better sense of exactly how much acreage this represents or what development rights there are worth, there’s no way to know how much of a sweetheart deal this is.
• The Maryland Stadium Authority, Baltimore mayor, and Maryland governor will still each get their own luxury suites for the course of the lease.

Announcing the upbeat bits while keeping the knotty details as secret as possible is a time-honored tradition in the stadium game, of course, but doing so with a non-announcement of a non-deal on the day after your team clinched its first division title in ten years is some next-level BS. All we really know for sure is that John Angelos and the state of Maryland have agreed to try to agree to a deal for the Orioles owner to receive somewhere between $600 million and who-knows-what in exchange for not threatening to move who-knows-where for at least the next 30 years — unless, of course, the eventual lease includes some kind of state-of-the-art out clause that would enable the O’s owners to break it early if future upgrades aren’t made. But surely Maryland state officials will be keeping a close eye on that—

“Amazing news! Now lets celebrate with some playoff wins! #LetsGoOs” said Delegate Dana Jones.

Siiiiiigh.