Category: Worcester Red Sox

I haven’t gotten up to Massachusetts yet to see the Worcester Red Sox‘ $160 million giant shipping container, but FoS reader Jason did on Sunday, and sent along some photos and observations:

Jason: Party Terrace area in right field above home bullpen. As you can see, a large portion of right field and the dedicated line score is obstructed by the patio/congregate area next to and above it. For what it’s worth, I walked over to the far left side of this area, right next to the box seats, to see if the view was much better, and it was only marginally so, meaning seats in that section of “field box” seats would also have obstructed views.

FoS: That is some pretty egregiously terrible design right there — why not push the patio areas a bit farther back from the field so fans on the terrace next to them can see right field? (Also, why does a stadium need a “party terrace” and a “patio congregate area”? But I digress.) This design element was present in the original renderings, so you would have thought someone would have noticed, but maybe all that digging into a hill cut into the budget for VR walkthroughs, or even just for building out the damn thing in Minecraft.

Jason: Same congregate area, but a level higher.  As you can see, the light pole blocks a good portion of the view from this spot and in many places, obstructs either the plate or the pitcher’s mound.

FoS: I’m on the record as saying that I’m fine with obstructed-view seats if pillars allow for the upper deck seats to be brought closer to the field (f in chat, Tiger Stadium), but for a light pole? It looks like there was room behind the patio to place the pole, too, so I have no idea what they were thinking here.

Jason: The video board is tucked so far to the left side of the outfield, it’s essentially blocked by the stadium structure. This would certainly be better the lower you walked down in the section, but you would still need to get pretty close to the front row to completely open up the video board view.

FoS: smdh

Jason: One of the things I was struck by was how “small” the park seemed. From what I read, the park only has about 6,000 fixed seats and the rest of the capacity, making its way over 9.000, would be filled out by congregate areas and the large grass berm under construction in left field.  This facility just doesn’t seem to project the sense that you are only “one level away” from the majors. In fact, I would argue that the park in Hartford gives off a much stronger AAA vibe than this one.

FoS: Small is … good? Intimate? Though “We got to 9,000 seats by making one-third of the fans either stand or sit on the ground” is maybe not so good.

Jason: A look at some of the “finishes” in the ballpark. The seats behind the rail are the seats that come with the skyboxes. As best I can tell, these are identical to the seats used in the regular field box section of the park, with no extra padding or flourishes that one would expect in a “luxury” seating category. Also, the corrugated metal fascia in lieu of brick or some other concrete or masonry facade. Again, this is a facility that cost roughly $160 million?

FoS: While it’s hard to complain too much about high rollers not getting enough padding on their seats, it is totally legit to complain about plain-ass seats and corrugated metal running up a bill of $160 million.

Jason: This is the one that really baffles me. I cannot imagine the thought process that went into designing a stadium using crushed stone as the floor in a portion of the concourse. (This is the right field area behind the “Worcester Wall.” Why wouldn’t you use concrete here or at worst, asphalt? And what does this area look like after it rains?

FoS: “Crushed stone” is apparently technically different from gravel, but let’s face it: Most people would call this gravel. There are no doubt reasons for this design choice, but it’s hard to avoid the feeling that one of them was “Only eight dollars a cubic foot at Lowe’s!”

The trifecta of poor design, cheap materials, and massive cost overruns is a tough one to achieve, yet the WooSox — at least from initial reports — appear to have hit it. It’s tough to believe that Janet Marie Smith, who helped design Camden Yards and the renovation of Fenway Park, drew up this place, but maybe she wasn’t involved in decisions like where to place the light poles? I, for one, can’t wait for the oral history of the Worcester stadium design process, because everyone loves a good train wreck.

 

I’m a little pressed for time this morning, but I did want to share with the schadenfreude lovers among you this review of the Worcester Red Sox‘ new $160 million stadium by GoLocalProv architecture critic Will Morgan, which is a master class in well-honed disdain. Let’s start with this:

Its public face is that of an Amazon warehouse or a giant shipping container.

Oof. Though, really, it’s tough to argue:

On the positive side, writes Morgan, “Polar Park is beautifully sited in term of views of
Worcester. You can see the field from all the seats, and the touted mirror image of Fenway is almost believable.” But then he shifts gears to the bigger question of whether it can bring about a renaissance for downtown Worcester — something that you may recall has been a bone of contention ever since team owners employed economist Andy Zimbalist to make that claim — and rules: Naaah.

When the novelty wears off in a few years (as studies of Triple-A parks suggest it will), the aftertaste will be one of debt. What did the Commonwealth of Massachusetts get for their contribution, and when will Worcester’s outlay of bonded dollars see a return?…

Worcester heard the siren song of flimflam like that of the Music Man, with the seductive appeal of a magic solution to urban ills. Putting all your faith and dollars in a stadium was an exhausted planning trope decades ago. Will Polar Park really hold 125 events a year? Will it ever pay its own way? Will it attract middle class families to move to Worcester? Is this the best way to spruce up a city with an image problem?…

Right around the corner is Green Street, a somewhat gritty, crowded, but lively area of juice, coffee, and booze bars, a public market, ethnic shops and bodegas, and Thai, Mexican, and Vietnamese restaurants. Is this the kind of real city that will be replaced by the new development?

Excellent questions, all, even if not exactly architectural ones.

It’s also worth noting, of course, that this article appeared on a news site in Rhode Island, which is more likely to slag the new WooSox stadium because they’re still stinging from Worcester using it to lure their baseball team away after 48 years. Still, his observations are valid ones, and it’s hard to look at the included photos without thinking, “$160 million? Really?” I mean:

Worcester’s not too far from me, so I’ll try to provide a firsthand report at some point. (Or maybe a secondhand report if I can find someone even closer to pay a visit.) Honestly, word that there are decent Vietnamese restaurants in town is a bigger draw to me than yet another generic minor-league ballpark — I should ask Zimbalist if that factored into his economic impact studies.

The Worcester Red Sox are about to open their new $157 million stadium — okay, about to open when the minor-league season starts, which isn’t until May, but anyway, isn’t two months in advance still a good time for the local newspaper to write a piece about how great the place will be once it’s finished? The local newspaper that is owned by the owner of the WooSox’ parent club? Surely this will be a reasoned and objective assessment, so let’s dig in:

Worcester didn’t want its new stadium to be Fenway Park.

Easily accomplished. Moving on!

There’s capacity for 9,508 fans, but the seating bowl of 6,000 seats — all with cup holders — is almost entirely around the infield.

That’s true of almost every minor-league ballpark. And, actually, most major-league ballparks, which have a grandstand wrapped around home plate, and usually at most some more cursory bleachers in the outfield. Glad to hear about the cupholders, though, because if there’s one thing American sports fans hate, it’s having to put their beers on the ground.

Polar Park will be unique. There’s a Woo Shop where purchases are recorded on an app without any checkout or waiting in line. There are heart-shaped light towers and a heart adorned on the side of each seat.

“Without any checkout” sounds like the Amazon store system, which is made possible by an insane number of surveillance cameras, so maybe that’s what the team has planned here? One hopes they will be heart-shaped cameras, at least, to honor Worcester’s nickname of “the Heart of the Commonwealth,” because it’s so close to the middle of the state, which, I guess?

On June 12, 1880, Worcester pitcher Lee Richmond threw the first perfect game in Major League history, against the Cleveland Blues.

Interesting! But not actually about the stadium, if we’re getting technical here.

“One of the things we’ve been good about is making sure that there is a customization factor in every ballpark, so it looks and tastes and feels and smells like the city in which it is located,” Lucchino says.

I’m not sure which is more disturbing, the notion of a stadium that “tastes like” Worcester, or what the construction crew needed to do to ensure quality control on that.

They could have built the stadium on flat land, but instead they shoehorned it into the historic Canal District with multiple levels, a nod to Worcester’s three deckers and the up-and-coming downtown restaurants.

Yes, they could have built on flat land, saving themselves and Worcester taxpayers $58 million. But they chose to build on a hill, because … I dunno, say something about restaurants, the Globe will print whatever we tell them.

“So you should be able to experience a two-dimensional ballpark. Both a low-priced ballpark where tickets are eight or nine dollars, and we have higher-priced tickets that come with more creature comforts,” says [WooSox owner and former Boston Red Sox CEO Larry] Lucchino.

That is not what two-dimensional means.

A long ball hit to left field could land in an open boxcar and wind up in Chicago.

Freight rail companies don’t leave boxcar doors open anymore, but nice thought!

The home bullpen is just a few feet past the dugout and built into the stands. To sit in a box seat sandwiched between the dugout and the bullpen is unique. Fans get an umpire’s view of pitchers warming up, and hear the pop of the catcher’s mitt up close and personal.

Seats right next to the bullpen actually sound kind of neat, though also something that can be experienced at a bunch of other stadiums, including Fenway Park. Though in Worcester this view will be reserved for high-paying patrons, so maybe that’s the unique part here.

Not mentioned at all in the article: The controversy over the stadium’s high public cost, not to mention the overruns that now have taxpayers on the hook for $146.8 million, or more than eight times what it cost to build Fenway Park in 1912, adjusted for inflation. On the other hand, the original Fenway seats didn’t have cupholders or surveillance cameras watching your every shopping move, and who can put a price on things like that? (A: Larry Lucchino, and that price was $146.8 million.)

I’m not exactly sure how something called the Worcester Airport Blog ended up closely covering the Worcester Red Sox‘ stadium subsidy controversy, but on Saturday it posted this:

Go to page 21 of the lease, section 4.5(b). It outlines who is responsible for cost overruns. The important sentence begins with “Notwithstanding … exceeds $18,000,000, the parties will work cooperatively to find alternative funding sources.” 

This says to us that the City may have to renegotiate with the Team if cost overruns exceed $18,000,000. Exhibit F states the cost overruns are currently $17,304,793 (as of 1/8/21) so the likelihood of there being cost overruns over $18,000,000 are probably high.

Backing up a minute: The new stadium being built to lure the Pawtucket Red Sox Triple-A baseball team to Worcester has been reported to cost a minor-league record $172 million, counting $157 million for actual stadium construction plus $15 million in “infrastructure” (mostly road work). The costs so far are broken down as follows:

• $100.8 million in initial costs from the city of Worcester, of which WooSox owner Larry Lucchino and his partners are repaying $6 million in cash upfront, plus a little over $1 million a year via rent payments for the next 35 years. That’s been portrayed as worth $35 million, but getting $1 million in the year 2056 isn’t the same as getting it now (not just because of inflation, but because of the interest rate on bonds), so really it’s worth only, let’s go to the Present Value Calculator, use a low 3% interest rate because money is cheap right now, and we get $21.5 million. So the other $73.3 million is on the city.
• $35 million for parking garages and other “infrastructure,” plus $3.5 million for a ballpark entryway, from the state of Massachusetts.
• $20 million extra from the city for additional costs of acquiring and preparing the site (in part because the city neglected to account for hills requiring retaining walls so they don’t fall down).
• Another $15 million from the city for that latest batch of road work.
• Lucchino & Co., meanwhile, will be on the hook for the $6 million in cash, that $21.5 million worth of future rent payments, $9.5 million in added construction costs from January 2020, plus $17.3 million in new overruns this past year.

That comes to $146.8 million in public costs, and $54.3 million in team costs, which totals $201.1 million. A sizable chunk of that isn’t technically “stadium costs” — it’s costs for things like roads and garages that are needed by the stadium, but not the stadium proper — but the total cost of the project is now right around the $200 million mark.

Which, finally, brings us to that section 4.5(b) of the WooSox’ lease:

(b) Tenant shall be responsible for all Ballpark Design and Construction Costs that exceed the Cost Estimate (“Additional Ballpark Costs”) except for those that are caused, directly or indirectly, by (i) the delay or negligence of, or failure to act by, Landlord, City, or any of their representatives or contractors, including the failure to comply with the applicable Commonwealth public procurement laws, for which the Landlord shall be solely responsible; (ii) Excusable Tenant Delay; or (iii) Excusable Landlord Delay. Notwithstanding the foregoing, in the event that Additional Ballpark Costs exceed $18,000,000, the Parties will work cooperatively to find other, alternative funding sources. The foregoing cap applies to and includes any Ballpark Design and Construction Costs that are necessary in order for the Ballpark to meet the Comparable Facilities Standard.

I am, as usual, not a lawyer, but that language seems clear as mud: The team is on the hook for all overruns, but notwithstanding that, for any overruns above $18 million the city will help find “alternative funding sources” (knocking over a liquor store?) to cover the rest. If the cost overruns go up by more than that — and as noted at the top, they’re already within $700,000 of the cap — and no alternative funding sources are available, the lease is all ¯_(ツ)_/¯ about what happens then.

That’s bad, but those earlier clauses in 4.5(b) aren’t great either, since they leave open the possibility of the team claiming that overruns are due to “delay” by the city, and there’s certainly been a ton of delays and likely to be more given, you know, everything. So the total public cost of this project is probably best described as “$150 million plus or minus ¯_(ツ)_/¯” — it’s almost certainly the most expensive minor-league baseball stadium in history either way, though, so at least they can start designing the historical plaque now.

The city of Worcester issued an update on Friday (actually dated tomorrow, but whatever) on its new Red Sox Triple-A stadium, which is full of small-type charts and lists and generally pretty dry. But Grant Welker of the Worcester Business Journal got out his abacus and went to work on the numbers, and was able to report this:

The cost of building Polar Park, the new home of the minor league Worcester Red Sox, has risen to $157 million, Worcester officials said Friday afternoon, reflecting cost increases stemming largely from the coronavirus pandemic.

With the increase, the public facility will become the most expensive minor league baseball stadium ever built, surpassing the inflation adjusted $153-million home of the Las Vegas Aviators.

May I be the first to say: Yikes!

The WooSox owners are paying for the latest $17.3 million in cost overruns, so at least this won’t cost Worcester more than the $100 million or so in subsidies that were approved back in 2018. Still, how on earth did this project’s costs balloon so rapidly?

The last time the stadium ran into overruns, it was $30 million in added costs that, according to Welker, mostly stemmed from “unexpected costs borne by the city for obtaining adjacent parcels, moving businesses and knocking down buildings to make way for the ballpark.” (Also because Worcester officials forgot how hills work. Let us never forget that.) This time it’s undefined pandemic-related costs: Some this appears to be “we had to stop work for seven weeks and still need to finish by spring 2021 (assuming there’s baseball in spring 2021)” and some of it something about supply chains mumble mumble, but still, $17.3 million seems like a lot for that.

The WooSox also have agreed to a lease, which is good because nobody remembered to do that before approving the subsidies and starting construction; I haven’t read through it fully yet, but it looks unremarkable. And the update also includes a whole bunch of new renderings, so let’s enjoy some of those now:

That’s unremarkable enough, though it’s amusing that some ad sponsors have been specified (Shaw’s grocery store) while others still just say “SPONSOR.” (Where the first-base coaching box should be. I’m not sure that’s allowable under baseball rules.) Also the team logo appears to be a smiley face with arms and legs. And Red Sox two-time All-Star shortstop Xander Bogaerts appears to have been demoted to the minors, or maybe is there on a rehab assignment. Otherwise, nothing too alarming.

Now it’s getting alarming. Why are there giant statues of Red Sox championship rings, and what does that small child and his mom find so fascinating about them? Other than that, looks like a pleasant enough plaza, though I’m not sure it’s advisable for the couple at the far right to walk through it barefoot.

What the hell? As a parent, I know something about what kids want in a baseball-themed playground, and it would either be 1) a miniature ballpark where you can play wiffle ball or 2) a big-ass slide. Baseball-themed boulders and a basepath covered in giant golf tees seem like odd design choices, and that’s even before we get to the smiley-face mascot (which must be inhabited by either a person with an abnormally short torso or with no head) playing keepaway with a baseball bat with a small child. We are well on our way to Boschian hellscape here.

This image, of a grassy hill outside the ballpark called Home Plate Hill because it’s kind of adjacent to the home plate grandstand, I guess, is unremarkable except for the woman at left who appears to be taking a photo of her dog using a large cinnamon roll as a camera.

Big Blue Bug Solutions is, as you might expect, a pest control service. It has apparently contracted to show off its solutions for pest removal by sponsoring an area where a select few fans can enjoy close-up views of the game without any protective netting, the better to be squashed like bugs by any foul balls.

Okay, it turns out Xander Bogaerts hasn’t been demoted — or rather, he’s been demoted to an unearthly realm where various Red Sox players of the last 50 years are all consigned to play out their declining years in a minor-league ballpark. Also Jim Rice has to play first base which he never once did in real life, even though Carl Yastrzemski, who did play lots of first base, could easily be moved there from Rice’s preferred position of left field. Clearly whoever constructed this image really has it in for Jim Rice — look, he’s even batting 9th, while the unheralded Jarrod Saltalamacchia bats cleanup — which is fair, Jim Rice was one of the most overrated players in baseball history.

Finally, we have the Ecotarium, Museum of Science and Nature, which seems to consist entirely of an exhibit on pitch speed, which you would think would at least include a radar gun and a place where kids could try out their feeble throwing arms and learn something about how radar works or something. But no! It’s just a cardboard cutout of a kid throwing a ball, at a distance of maybe ten feet from a photograph of a catcher. I’m almost willing to believe that this is supposed to be a real kid but the colorist screwed up, but if so why is he being forced to deliver his pitch over a counter? And won’t errant throws grievously injure those two older kids nearby admiring the ceiling? Oh wait, I get it — the science here is medical science, and kids will be able to see it in action up close and personal when EMTs have to rush to the aid of someone who’s just been concussed by a baseball delivered to their noggin at close range! I take it back, these people totally know what will entertain a small child — can’t wait to make my first visit!

Whut:

More than two years after Worcester city officials announced the Pawtucket Red Sox were moving to the Canal District, there is no formal lease agreement legally obligating the team to come to Worcester.

And about six months before the minor league baseball team is scheduled to begin play in a new $132-million public stadium, the city government still doesn’t own the property on which its ballpark sits, even as construction on the project is well underway.

As the Worcester Business Journal notes, these are important omissions not so much because the Triple-A Red Sox really might back out of their move — they’re getting more money in subsidies than it was initially budgeted to build their stadium, why would they turn that down? — than because this gives the team huge leverage in negotiating lease terms, not to mention the stadium land’s private owners huge leverage in negotiating sale and development terms.

The biggest immediate issue, as the Worcester Business Journal points out, is cost overruns: The initial $90 million price tag for the stadium hit $132 million in January, and could yet surpass the $150 million Las Vegas Aviators stadium for priciest minor-league ballpark ever. The city covered the initial round of cost overruns — partly through direct cash, partly through money that the WooSox are putting up and then getting repaid via future ticket tax money that otherwise would have gone to the city — and are going to be hard-pressed to get the team owners to cover any future rounds, what with their ability to say, “Gee, I dunno, there are plenty of other cities we could still move to…”

“What’s unfortunate about this is this should have all been worked out up front,” Marquette sports law professor Martin Greenberg understated to the WBJ. “This is not usual.” City officials getting their heads handed to them in lease negotiations is sadly all too usual, but forgetting to actually sign the deal before building the stadium, that’s breaking new ground, yeah.