Sharon Steele – RI Future

September 5, 2015September 6, 2015

PawSox Stadium opponents film music video outside McCoy

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On Saturday morning over 75 people assembled outside McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket to sing a slightly altered version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” for a video planned to protest moving the Pawtucket Red Sox to a proposed new stadium in Providence. Director Murray Scott lead the crowd in singing the song, from cue cards, four times as volunteers stopped traffic. Surprisingly, none of the drivers of any of the cars evidenced anything but support for the effort, despite the inconvenience of being stopped. instead drivers honked horns, waved, or gave thumb’s up to the efforts of the singers.

Despite what appears to be recent victories for stadium opponents in the form of RI Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello‘s admission that a deal with Brown University and the City of Providence seems unlikely, organizers Tim Empkie, Sharon Steele and David Norton all feel that the pressure needs to be kept on.

Murray Scott says that the video made today will be premiered in a couple of weeks on the Motif Magazine and GoLocal Prov news sites. In the meantime, below is a preview.

July 28, 2015August 18, 2015

Public opposition to downtown stadium builds

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It was by far the biggest meeting I had ever seen at Rochambeau Library, and bigger than any crowd I have seen at any of the PawSox listening tours. The crowd filled the room and overflowed into the halls. About 125 people attended the Providence Campaign Against the Stadium organizational meeting in Providence Monday night. Organizers Sam Bell, Sharon Steele, Tim Empke and Suzanne Mark conducted a meeting to recruit help in defeating the building of a new PawSox stadium in Providence.

Those in attendance were unhappy with elected officials who have decided to reserve judgement and not come out against giving the PawSox owners taxpayer monies and/or tax breaks. They also came out because they are strongly in favor of keeping the land in question true to its original intention as a public park open to all. The consensus seems to be that the vast majority of Rhode Islanders are opposed to any kind of stadium deal, and that elected officials such as Governor Gina Raimondo, Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello and Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed are not listening to their constituents even as they negotiate in secret with PawSox management.

Part of the campaign’s strategy has been collecting signatures to pressure the Providence City Council into rejecting any kind of tax deal for the Stadium. Enough signatures have been collected to force the City Council to take up the issue and the campaign is actively collecting the signatures needed to put the stadium initiative on the ballot. If Providence rejects the stadium, then the stadium cannot be built.

However, Mayor Jorge Elorza has joined state elected officials in not taking any kind of stand against the stadium, adopting the same wait-and-see attitude. This annoyed many of those who were at the Rochambeau meeting, who feel that the East Side helped to elect the Mayor, and that he should be more receptive to the opinions of voters than to the interests of out of state millionaires.

If eight members of the Providence City Council come out strongly against the deal, the stadium is a dead issue, but there is a catch. The General Assembly has the power to rewrite local laws and over ride the Providence City Council or the voters of Providence. They have done so in the past when referendums threaten corporate interests. Last year the General Assembly passed legislation (as a budget amendment to avoid public commentary) taking away the rights of cities and towns to set their own minimum wages as a gift to The Procaccianti Group, which runs several hotels downtown and around the world.

The Campaign organizers thought this scenario unlikely.

After the main meeting the group separated into several working groups, concentrating on different aspects of the campaign.

By way of contrast, two hours earlier the PawSox sales team was in the Barrington Town Hall as part of their ongoing “listening tour” to be held in every city and town in Rhode island. Charles Steinberg, who usually conducts these meetings since the death of Jim Skeffington, was not on hand because he was helping with the celebrations around the induction of Pedro Martinez into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

This left the sales duties to organizer Sydney McKenna, special assistant to Larry Lucchino Dan Rea III and Red Sox accountant Jeff White.

Things did not go great.

The crowd of about 40 people were forced to submit all questions in writing before hand under the watchful eyes of two hired police officers. No one spoke up in favor of the stadium, many people spoke out against it. Former Attorney General Arlene Violet was in attendance, and she pounded the speakers with tough questions, often speaking up out of turn to make her points. It was the only way to express an opinion to the room given the format of the meeting.

Violet pushed back hard against the contention that nearly 50 percent of those attending PawSox games come from out of state. She asked where the numbers Jeff White was putting out were coming from. White said that the PawSox have been polling those coming to the game for the past five weeks.

When Violet countered that the poll lacked any kind of validity, White scowled. Sydney McKenna, former campaign manager for talk show host Buddy Cianci’s bid for Mayor of Providence commented that she missed having Violet on the radio.

After the meeting a Barrington native told me he felt insulted by the sales team. He was disgusted by their disregard of the public’s opinion and by what he considered to be the combative nature of Jeff White.

June 26, 2015June 28, 2015

Mayor Grebien rallies support, says new owners are no Ben Mondor

The potential move of the Pawtucket Red Sox to downtown Providence has caused heated debate between the public and the General Assembly since the idea was first floated earlier this year. On Thursday, opponents of the move rallied outside of the State House to express their passionate disapproval for the move.

Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien shared his own memories of McCoy Stadium at the rally, saying that he knows that he’s not the only one with such an emotional attachment.

“Like many of you, the first baseball game I ever attended was at McCoy. As a kid, I used to go to McCoy with my parents and grandparents to enjoy the games and see the future Red Sox greats before they were household names,” he said.

“I am certain all of you have similar experiences and traditions that you hold dearly as well. The memories and traditions formed at McCoy are things we all cherish. Memories we fear Rhode Island’s kids may never get to experience for themselves.”

Grebien continued to speak about the stadium’s previous ownership under Ben Mondor, and how Mondor was dedicated to the Pawtucket community as well as the team. The new ownership does not hold such sentiment.

“The new ownership has a very different business model, one that some could say is totally contrary to what exists there now. It lacks the vision, compassion, and commitment to the core principles that have made the franchise so successful,” Grebien said.

After his speech, Grebien added that the citizens of Pawtucket have not been involved in any of the business decisions the new owners have made. Residents have not even been made privy to the feasibility study that was reportedly conducted to determine the condition of McCoy.

“What we’re trying to understand, and what we’ve asked for from the ownership, is a feasibility study that they’ve done to give us an idea. How bad is it? If it’s bad, show us it’s bad,” he said.

Grebien is not the only one who feels this way, though. Sam Bell, the Rhode Island State Coordinator for the Progressive Democrats of America, has his own reasons opposing the PawSox becoming the ProvSox.

“There’s so many issues,” he began. “It starts with the basic principles of the public planning. Taking away a public park, flooding the area with surface parking, clogging out businesses, creating massive amounts of noise that disrupts the residents who live there.”

According to Bell, most people who he has spoken with who live or work around the vacant I-195 lands, which is where the new stadium would be built, do not want it there. The request for public money to help fund the project is also wrong in Bell’s eyes.

“It’s the public’s money. The amount they’re asking for is grotesque,” he said. “The amount they are asking for here is obscene to a degree that we often don’t even see.”

“I actually think it’s bad for Providence, to move it into that location, which is going to be a park, and it would hurt Pawtucket to leave it. One of the great things about this is that there’s so many issues and people come at it with so many different perspectives, but everyone agrees, we have to stop this deal,” Bell added.

Economic development has been one of the biggest talking points in support of a new stadium. Sharon Steele, a board member of the Jewelry District Association, finds that exact reason is why everyone should be fighting against a stadium. If a stadium were to be built, it would only bring minimum wage jobs, rather than small businesses that could directly benefit the community. Steele also mentioned that the park would help to draw in business more so than a stadium.

“Parkland is a hugely important center place for appropriate development,” she said. “Whether you look at Central Park, or you look at all the other magnificent parks across the country, and the I-195 land was specifically made for economic development, and a stadium simply does not fulfill that specific requirement.”

With both the House of Representatives and the Senate in recess until September, it’s hard to say what the fate of the PawSox will be. Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello has given his support for the move, but he has also said that he will not go against what the public ultimately wants. Unless something major happens between now and September, the public seems to believe that the PawSox should stay right at home, in Pawtucket.