PAWTUCKET – Looking to move past the controversies and criticism surrounding the deal, local officials and the developer on Friday ceremonially broke ground on the Tidewater Landing soccer stadium-anchored project in Pawtucket.
Rhode Island and Pawtucket taxpayers will pick up $45.5 million of the privately owned stadium’s $124 million cost. More phases of the broader project are coming, supporters say: housing, retail, open space improvements.
Governor Dan McKee cast the tiebreaking vote for a new financing plan last month, allowing it to move forward despite strident opposition within and outside of the state Commerce Corporation. On Friday, when asked what he’d tell people who fear it’ll be a boondoggle, McKee didn’t hold back.
“I would say, wake up,” said McKee, wearing a hard hat and soccer scarf. “Wake up and see what’s happening in the state of Rhode Island.”
After ticking off some of the state’s good news, like high vaccination rates and low unemployment, McKee repeated himself: Wake up, and open your eyes. “Let’s report the progress and the momentum we have,” McKee said. “This is a piece of that.”
The project has its roots in the departure of the Pawtucket Red Sox for a more lucrative public subsidy in Worcester. State officials asked developers to come forward for development plans targeted at downtown Pawtucket.
Brown University graduate and Los Angeles resident Brett Johnson, who has ownership stakes in lower-level American and British soccer clubs, proposed Tidewater Landing. The stadium would be a centerpiece of the $284 million development, with housing, retail space and a pedestrian bridge on both sides of the Seekonk River. The stadium would go in a long-polluted parcel that’s undergone environmental cleanup in recent years. In February 2021, the state and city pledged a combined $46 million in subsidies, most of which, the state emphasized, would go to work around the stadium, rather than the stadium itself.
But this spring the developer ran into major cost inflation, sending the price tag soaring from $83 million to $124 million – just for the stadium. In response, rather than add more state taxpayer money to the project, the state Commerce Corporation developed a plan for the state to move most of its financing to the stadium, rather than the work around it. That sparked concerns that the state could end up paying for just a stadium, and not getting anything else. Meanwhile the stadium alone isn’t projected to kick up enough new state revenue to fully pay back the borrowing that the state will do to pay for it.
Brett Johnson, founder of the developer Fortuitous Partners, says there’s simply no way they’ll stop building at just the stadium. Those fears are simply misinformed, Johnson said. In fact, Johnson said, the developers will make most of their money from the non-stadium work. Parcels on the other side of the river are in what’s called an opportunity zone, a federal program that provides for lucrative tax benefits to invest in distressed areas.
Is he surprised by the criticism? No, Johnson said, given that it’s an election year.
“It’s a great day for the city, a great day for the state, and onward and upward,” Johnson said.
The team hasn’t yet unveiled its name or its colors. Members of the ownership team include Michael Parkhurst, a Rhode Island native and former U.S. international who was on hand Friday. The soccer stadium site, where the groundbreaking was held, is off Taft Street. It’s already gone a long environmental cleanup process.
The groundbreaking attracted not just politicians and union leaders and local officials and reporters and investors, but also a lot of soccer players. College, high-school, even younger, including a group of kids in matching Bayside FC kits. Bayside is an East Providence-based club. They even got to turn over some dirt with shovels after the politicians were through.
Markos Andrade, 11, who plays right D for the team, said Bayside’s main strength is its cooperation. And in a few years time – 2024, the developer says – Markos will be back when the stadium opens for pro soccer. He’ll be there for sure, he said.
“I’d love to just watch the pros, and learn from them,” Markos said.
Brian Amaral can be reached at brian.amaral@globe.com. Follow him @bamaral44.