Ramapo stadium vote and a failed public policy

By Evan Weiner

(New York, N. Y.) -- There is a referendum next week that has no national political ramifications in the Town of Ramapo, New York, a municipality of over 100,000 people that is located a bit more than 20 miles north of the George Washington Bridge and upper Manhattan. The residents are being asked whether they want to spend at least 16 million dollars of the town's money to build a 3,500-seat venue that will house a CanAm League baseball team. The CanAm League is not affiliated with either Major League or Minor League Baseball. The teams are made up from a collection of players that Major League scouts decided to pass over or broken down old Major League players looking to keep in shape hoping at another shot at "The Show."

The Ramapo Town Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence is absolutely convinced that spending what will become tens of millions of dollars will be a good investment even though there is so much documented proof that municipalities going into the sports business end up having to constantly scramble for funds to cover unanticipated expenditures starting with stadium cost overruns. But St. Lawrence knows better than stadium opponents and the real life experiences in places like Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Jacksonville, after all his hired firm of financial consultants Fishkind and Associates has told him that the ballpark will be a winner.

In this day and age of states, cities, towns, villages and counties cutting back on social services and education, it would seem that the perceived leaders of daily debates--- experts cable TV news and talk radio -- in the country, (the "experts" who are made up of drug addicts, alcoholics, the criminals -- getting a radio gig seems to be a way of rehabilitation after serving time in jail for some gabbers --, gamblers, adulterers, intolerant xenophobes, disgraced politicians, political operatives and say anything talk show hosts. These the "experts" have been hired by people like Rupert Murdoch, Red McCombs, Lowry Mays, and the Clear Channel crew Jeffrey Immelt, Chancellor radio and others to keep watchers of cable TV news or listeners to talk radio interested so that viewers and listeners have a bridge between commercials that urge them to hiring top notch attorneys to solve IRS liens and make them go away and erectile dysfunction medicine. You would figure the "experts" would jump on a story of this nature.

A Democrat ready to spend liberally on a stadium.

But the "experts" really aren't "experts" on anything except fueling rage and hate while collecting a paycheck for being entertainers.

Here is what they are missing by not looking at the Ramapo issue. Stadiums are losing propositions and never deliver on promises of being economic engines.

The daily debaters should be talking about the subject because it is a national epidemic as cities and states have to pay off facility debt and don't have the money to do so but that would require serious research work something that almighty, know-it-alls on cable TV "news" shows and radio talk shows won't and can't do. They live off opinions not facts. Opinions designed to make angry people even angrier as Sam Donaldson once noted after he quit hosting a talk show on WMAL Radio in Washington. Donaldson just could not fake the fake angry that talk show hosts need to have.

Spending on sports facilities in the United States is a major issue and when a municipality decides to get into the sports business, it becomes a money pit of which there seems to be no escape. Ramapo Town Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence is hell bent on building a baseball park for a sports league which has at best a mediocre financial history.

The Cam-Am League has six (two from New Jersey) teams playing in 2010. St. Lawrence wants to see Ramapo included as the league's seventh team in 2011 and he has authorized the town to build a $25 million ($16.7 million for the stadium the rest for land acquisition), 3,500-seat park for an owner who wants to cast his lot in a league that doesn't seem to have too many fans. According to the Can-Am website, the league's attendance through August 17 should cause Town of Ramapo residents real concerns as they are the ones who will pay for St. Lawrence's dream.

The Quebec City-based Capitales have had the most customers so far this year with 111,937 tickets sold in 35 dates or about 3,198 a game. The Jersey Jackals, a team that plays games at Yogi Berra Stadium on the grounds of Montclair State University, have sold tickets to 71,171 people in 35 openings or an average of 2,033 a date. In Brockton, Massachusetts, near Boston, the Rox franchise is nearly on par with the Jackals in getting fannies in the seats. Brockton has attracted 71,146 people in 34 games or an average of 2,092. In Worcester, Massachusetts, the Tornadoes team has played 36 home games and has sold 69,962 tickets or 1,874 a game.

The Augusta, New Jersey-based Sussex Skyhawks have had a difficult time selling tickets since the team began in 2006. This year the team has played 36 home games and has drawn just 61,921 or an average of 1,943 an outing. The team's attendance has dropped every year since 2,006.

Pittsfield, Massachusetts's Colonials franchise has played 36 home games and is averaging 738 tickets sold per game. Colonials baseball has drawn 26,574 fans this year.

This is the grim financial picture of the league that St. Lawrence wants his taxpayers to invest in by building a stadium for prospective owners. As St. Lawrence continued to make his push to get a stadium funded and a prospective owner, the East Ramapo School District (which is part of the Town of Ramapo) was making plans to lay off workers and was closing a school, the Hillcrest School which is not far from where the stadium with a promise of a few minimum wage per diem jobs will be built.

Can-Am League players don't get paid much money either. Independent baseball differs from minor league baseball in a significant way. Major League Baseball teams pick up the salaries for managers, coaches, players and trainers in the farm system which eliminates a significant payroll item for owners; in the independent leagues, owners pay for everything. There is a tight salary cap in the independent leagues.

The Can-Am League has a long list of defunct teams: Atlantic City, N.J., Elmira, N.Y., New Hampshire (Nashua), New Haven, North Shore (Lynn, Ma.) and Ottawa, Ontario.

A 2005 team was supposed to play in Bangor, Maine. That franchise became a road team known as the Grays and folded with Elmira after the 2005 inaugural Can-Am season. The league had 10 teams in 2007 and has lost 40 percent of the league members since then.

But St. Lawrence is moving ahead and has signed a memorandum of understanding through the not-for-profit Ramapo Local Development Corporation and Bottom 9 Baseball, LLC. The document is not a binding legal paper but it lays out what is ahead for Ramapo taxpayers and the baseball team owners. RLDC and Bottom 9 Baseball have 18 months to finish a deal after the clock started on June 4, 2010. It is not as though Ramapo had many suitors at the town's doorstep for the new stadium. It is going to be a tough go for anyone to sellout a 3,500-seat baseball stadium in Ramapo and in the "secondary" markets of Rockland and Orange Counties in New York and Bergen County in New Jersey.

The contract between the town and the team will be for 20-years, which is quite a stretch considering the Can-Am League is just playing a sixth season after reorganizing following the failure of the Northeast League. The Northeast League began in 1995 and merged with the Northern League in 1998. The two groups split after the 2002 season.

The league has never enjoyed financial stability in 16-years of various incarnations.

The Ramapo-Bottom 9 Baseball deal could fall apart on August 15, 2010 if a number of conditions have not been met. Ramapo and RLDC have to find money to support the construction (with or without Ramapo taxpayers' approval) and have to get all the necessary land approvals. Lawsuits could delay or scuttle the project entirely. Bottom 9 Baseball also has to be in a league by October 8, 2010.

Assuming Bottom 9 Baseball gets into the Can-Am League (and pays a million dollars or so for that right) and is set to go and Ramapo or the RLDC gets the stadium funding together, the new facility will be built over the winter and will be ready to open on June 6, 2011. Bottom 9 Baseball will be throwing a million dollars or four percent of the estimated costs into the venue. The team will pay $175,000 a year in rent. It would take more than a century for Ramapo to get back the construction costs at that rate. The team threw a couple of bones to Ramapo. The municipality will get a dollar for each ticket sold (not including those seats in the stadium's 20 luxury boxes – the town will get some money from those seats and some money from the sale of the stadium's naming rights. What are the odds that a Ramapo Stadium can get any money for naming rights when the New York Giants/Jets Meadowlands Stadium, the Dallas Cowboys Stadium and the Golden State Warriors facility are still unnamed? What also has to be disturbing to St. Lawrence is that the city of Jacksonville waived the 25 percent of an estimated $16 million naming rights deal at the city's stadium to help the Jacksonville Jaguars bottom line. The city is forfeiting $800,000 in revenues annually for the next five years.)

The team will give Ramapo two dollars from each car parked in the stadium's lot for a game. The town will also get 10 percent of the concessions whether it is food, beverage or merchandise sold at the stadium. The team will keep signage rights in the building. Based on Can-Am League attendance figures, the Town of Ramapo will get somewhere between $3,000 and $4,000 a game if the town and team is lucky.

Fishkind thinks the stadium will bring in $1.4 million a year which would cover the $1.3 million annual debt service that St. Lawrence projects for the stadium. Politicians when it comes to stadium costs are so easily fooled. There is a paper trail of consultant figures that can fill up rooms at municipal buildings around the country of rosy projections. In Cincinnati, the city and Hamilton County need to find money somewhere to cover the debt of the city's football stadium.

Revenues will come in at $500,000 for the Town of Ramapo and that is a big maybe from games in real world projections not Town of Ramapo-hired economist projections.

Ramapo taxpayers better understand that this stadium will be a loss leader no matter what both sides say. Ramapo officials think the team will bring in $900,000 in stadium related revenues. The bad news, the revenues figure is grossly overstated, the good news for Ramapo is that at this point they are not being asked to pay the team's expenses like New Orleans and Indianapolis and Glendale, Arizona residents are doing for pro sports teams. The bad news is that Ramapo will have to find money somewhere to pay from the annual $1.3 million stadium debt. That money won't be coming from local college baseball teams (Rockland Community College, St. Thomas Aquinas College and Dominican College) or high school baseball or stadium concerts, as the seating capacity is too small for anything but small acts.

There is also a question of infrastructure (road repairs, sewer installation and other improvements) and other costs including police. Can the area also handle game day traffic, although that would seem to be a moot point considering the lack of attendance in the Can-Am league?

Another question that should be answered: Who is paying RLDC's legal fees? St. Lawrence or the town?

There is also a clause about radio and TV and how Ramapo and the RLDC will get some advertising money from broadcasts and telecasts of the team. Many Major League Baseball teams, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League and National Football League teams have revenue sharing deals with local radio stations and a radio network. Ramapo has two radio stations.

There is a major radio problem, the stronger signal of the two Rockland radio stations (a 1,000 watt daytime) broadcasts in Polish and the other is a 500 watt station daytime that doesn't cover the entire county. Most games will be played at night when the station's signals are diminished under rules established by the Federal Communications Commission. The money that can be charged for a commercial on a small radio station for an independent baseball league team might amount to tip money at a local diner.
There is always Internet radio.

Unless some local access cable TV company wants to put some games on TV, there will be no TV. The affiliated Brooklyn Cyclones franchise in the Short Season A Ball, New York-Penn League is owned by the New York Mets and there are a couple games on TV on SNY and maybe a game here or there on WFAN. The Yankees' Staten Island affiliate in the New York Penn League is on the YES Network once in a while or a blue moon, whatever frequency is less.

The terms of the Ramapo-Bottom 9 Baseball agreement heavily favors the baseball team which is not surprising.

If the stadium is not done by June 6, 2011, Ramapo will pay Bottom 9 Baseball a penalty of $2,500 a day for every day the stadium is unusable or up to $175,000. If construction of the stadium starts and Bottom 9 Baseball cannot get into a league, Bottom 9 Baseball has to give Ramapo $675,000.

If the stadium isn't built and the RLDC and Bottom 9 Baseball have an agreement and the agreement is canceled out because there is no stadium by September 30, 2011, Ramapo taxpayers are on the hook for $500,000 as a penalty for Ramapo not living up to the contract.

Bottom 9 Baseball gets exclusive use of the stadium 85 days a year, which is the summer when an outdoor stadium in the northeastern part of the United States should be most utilized. Ramapo gets the stadium 280 days a year, mostly in the winter. It is hard to hold an outdoor concert on January 17 and putting a temporary ice rink in the middle of a 3,500-seat outdoor facility in winter borders on financial lunacy if the town thinks that an outdoor rink in a baseball stadium will make some money.

There is a high baseball team mortality rate in the Can-Am league. Chris St. Lawrence probably doesn't want to know all of this but Ramapo residents should. There really is no media in Ramapo other than the local Gannett newspaper which has shrunk the paper's newsroom staff and the physical size of the paper that has gone into any real detail about what is a failed urban and public policy----stadium and arena subsidies.

Stadium and arena building became an integral part of public policy in the 1940s when Oakland decided to build a football stadium however that was shot down in a referendum. But other cities such as Baltimore and Milwaukee jumped onto the stadium building bandwagon and by the 1950s, cities began putting money aside for simple stadiums that could be used for baseball and football. By the 1990s, sports executives convinced politicians that building a sports arena or stadium would be an economic engine. That was the mantra in Cleveland and people said yes to a baseball stadium for the Indians and a project called The Gateway was built which came complete with a baseball stadium, a multipurpose arena, a football stadium and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The project has been bleeding money and the latest plan to help Cleveland's downtown is opening a casino next to the arena.

Ramapo voters will decide if they want to join this world next Tuesday and even if they say no, they will find out another truth in sports. No never means no. Politicians will find another way to build a stadium. The failed public policy issue of stadium and arena building is an issue that the "experts" on radio and TV never talk about.