Before investing $25.5 million in a baseball stadium and team, you would think the first steps taken by the Town of Ramapo would include a serious business plan. Estimate the costs, the risks, the benefits, ROI, and the overall suitability of the project for the community. There’s no evidence that this has been done, and the public has been generally stonewalled in its attempt to get any information about the project beyond what Christopher St. Lawrence chooses to feed to the newspaper and Channel 12. None of this seems to bother the Supervisor. But then again, he’s not playing with his own money—he’s using house money, or more precisely, the taxes you pay on your house—that money. And the obligation will be yours and your kids’ until the year 2040.
 

Actually, the evaluation wouldn’t take a binder of spreadsheets. A back-of-the-envelope look at this project should be clear enough to scare the hell out of any taxpayer in Ramapo. This project has a very poor chance at financial success. We welcome Supervisor St. Lawrence (CFO of Ramapo) and Nate Oberman (Collector of Taxes) to sit down with us and point out any corrections to the data we use here.
 

Paramount to the entire enterprise is this single question: Will this succeed? Will a Ramapo Can-Am team establish itself in a way that will guarantee revenue and recreation for the community into the future? The ability to pay off the $25.5 million debt without harm to already overstretched taxpayers deserves the greatest attention.

[Calculation] The Can Am League, the Town’s partner in this venture, is an independent league that is not affiliated with Major League Baseball nor Minor League Baseball. The league currently has six teams--three in Massachusetts, two in New Jersey, and one in Canada. In 2008, the league had 8 teams but both the Ottawa and Atlantic City franchises folded.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of Can Am League teams fail. The CanAm League has had 22 teams in its modern franchises, and of those teams 16 of 22 have folded. The probability for the failure of a team in the CanAm League is 73%.

There are no current CanAm teams in New York State, but in the past there have been seven New York franchises. They were in Glens Falls, Colonie, Mountaindale, Elmira, Little Falls, Newburgh, and Yonkers. Every one failed. Three of the New York teams left and consequently failed in their new locations as well, so actually the 7 New York teams failed 9 teams—none have succeeded in the state.

[Bottom line] CanAm League teams fail at a rate of 73% of the time. In New York State no team from this league has ever succeeded—the NYS failure rate is 100%. A Ramapo team would be the eighth attempt in New York. (The table that documents the history and failure rates of the teams appears at the bottom of this article.)

2. Paying down the debt

The indebtedness of the taxpayers will last 30 years. Mr. St. Lawrence has confidently predicted that the team and stadium will break even, even in the first years. Missing from his projection are the facts and past record that comprise the written history of his partner.

[Calculation] The overwhelming odds (73% league-wide and 100% NYState-wide) are that the team will fail. Check the tables. (Note: You might count more than 22 teams, but we have counted multiple failures like the Waterbury Spirit, which failed in Waterbury in 2000 and then moved to Lynn and failed there in 2007 as the North Shore Spirit, as one team for the total franchise count.)

The average life expectancy of the failing teams in the CanAm League is 2.6 years. If the longevity of the Ramapo team is a statistically predictable 2.6 years, even with a break-even status for those years, there is going to be a large loss delivered to the taxpayers.

[Bottom line] If the local team follows the same path as every other NYS CanAm franchise, the Town will have 2.6 years to recoup the investment. To do that would require a few spectacular years of $9,615,384.60—nine and a half million, that is, in cleared profits

According to the Town, the tickets are going to be $7 and $12. That just won’t do it if there’s a 50-home-game schedule (the league current average). Fifty games over 2.6 years is 130 games. In a 3,000-seat venue, the size of the proposed stadium, that’s an optimum 390,000 patrons if every seat is filled for every game.

Now, if you the taxpayer expected to escape unscathed, the team would have to fill every seat for every game over two-and-a-half years and charge $65.38 per ticket. You would also have to have a zero-cost maintenance and service workforce, but since that’s not going to happen, the individual game ticket price would probably be more in the range of $100+, especially if business-sports writer Evan Weiner is correct when he wrote: "St. Lawrence ought to be more familiar with federal law when it comes to stadium and revenues when it comes back to paying down the debt. Only eight cents out of every dollar generated inside a facility built with public funding goes back to the public unless a very specific lease arrangement is worked out."

The likelihood of a 100% sellout at $100 per seat over almost three years is about as likely as any CanAm team lasting for 30 years—it’s never happened, ever in the league’s history. So our Supervisor would have you believe this team would do what no team in the CanAm League has ever done, not in this era beginning in 2004, or even before in the years 1936 – 1951 when its first incarnation ended with the collapse of the entire league. And how does he expect people to believe this, you might wonder. Simple, you don’t tell them anything about the league’s past performance.

See item #2. This project is a leaking propane tank, and like so many other St. Lawrence initiatives, anyone doing a serious risk-analysis up front might not spend much time on this section of the assessment. The ROI is not likely to ever reach anything close to break even status..

When you hear the Supervisor or any of his Board painting the usual "blue-sky" scenarios for this project, politely ask them to post the complete business plan (based on numbers, not rhetoric) on the Ramapo Town Website. Call the Supervisor’s radio show slot (Friday mornings on WRCR, AM 1300). Ask him at the next Town Board meeting (2^nd and 4^th Wednesdays at Ramapo Town Hall—Route 59, Tallman.) And remind him that marketing is only one part of any overall business plan—you want the hard numbers based on current facts and past performances. The names of the developers chosen, the possible teams being considered, the projections for profit and liabilities, and the viability of the overall project—these and many other issues need a public airing before the board breaks out the Town’s worn credit card and locks us into three decades of serious debt.

In his critical article, journalist Evan Weiner described the Supervisor as wearing rose-colored glasses concerning the stadium and the team. Further, he accused him of naïveté: "The reality is St. Lawrence is willing to buy a bill of goods, but he doesn’t think so and that is the problem."

There might be a larger problem. The Journal was told that the Supervisor had already chosen who would sing the national anthem at the first game and there’s going to be a naming contest. At a time when the discussion should be centered entirely on a serious analysis of costs and benefits, what’s with this focus on the theater of the opening day ceremonies?

There are those who have offered the opinion that this is just a workaround for the Supervisor to sell another large parkland piece of property to developer friends. Let the ballpark and team fail, and then sell the public on the idea that in order to recoup losses, the land has to be sold. Remember, St. Lawrence has entered into sales negotiations with a developer over the Quarry property that he himself has designated as "Open Space."

And then there’s another theory. It’s possible that the ten-year incumbent is becoming increasingly nervous about his legacy. A growing number believe that he is destined to be remembered as the architect who oversaw the destruction of Ramapo. Is this project then just an extension of the obsession he has with seeing his name on every signboard, document, pool pass, handout, movie ticket. . . his voice chiming out from the eight official ($30k) town clocks. . . his embarrassing Thursday television sessions. . .? All these "I am Ramapo" artifacts are time-stamped, and all have built-in expiration dates. Perhaps that light went on when St. Lawrence reached his 60^th birthday. And now he’s already hearing the music on opening day at "The House that Chris Built." It’s unfortunate, but it’s our houses that will provide the collateral that he takes into this craps-shoot.

Michael Castelluccio
www.PreserveRamapo.org 　
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The League is not classified AAA, AA, A, Short Season A, Rookie, or as an Off-Season League. The Can-Am League is an Independent League (along with American Association, Atlantic League, Continental Baseball, Frontier, Golden Baseball, Northern, and the United League Baseball). These Leagues are not affiliated with Major League Baseball or Minor League Baseball, and they operate as fully independent professional leagues.

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There have been seven Can-Am teams tried in New York State. They were in Glens Falls, Colonie, Mountaindale, Elmira, Little Falls, Newburg, and Yonkers. Three of the teams left New York to new locations where they subsequently folded, and four of the teams folded while in their New York stadiums. (Seven teams failed 9 times.) Of the 22 modern franchises for this league, 16 have folded. That’s an overall failure rate of 73%.