BallparkDigest.com has this awesome story about
the Lehigh Valley IronPigs.
When Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski sat down to breakfast Nov. 8, what he read in the newspaper ruined his appetite.
Right there, in the local section, was a story detailing how the Lehigh Valley IronPigs had inked a deal to have visiting teams that would play in the soon-to-open baseball stadium in east Allentown stay in a downtown Bethlehem hotel.
It was the latest setback for Pawlowski in four years of attempts to have minor league baseball drive economic development in downtown Allentown.
Oh, it gets better.
So, when the first pitch is thrown March 30, Pawlowski will be there cheering for the home team. But he'll be doing it believing the Triple-A team and $49.4 million Coca-Cola Park will provide little benefit to anyone from Allentown who isn't in the stands with him.
''No tax revenues, no team name, no economic benefit to the downtown and now, even the opposing teams are going somewhere else,'' Pawlowski said this week. ''So what does Allentown get? Zero, zip, absolutely nothing. That hotel deal really put a sour taste in my mouth.''
Lehigh County Administration Director Tom Muller had little sympathy for the mayor. The county floated $17.5 million in bonds to help build the stadium -- bonds that baseball would pay back only if the stadium remains open for 29 years.
''None of us can collect taxes or revenues here, yet we've taken all the risk and Allentown hasn't invested a penny,'' Muller said. ''If this thing collapsed in three years, [County Executive] Don Cunningham's rock band better get real good real fast. We have all the skin in this game and Allentown's got none.''
Wow. More?
Still, Pawlowski on Wednesday spent 45 minutes in his office with IronPigs general manager Kurt Landes, trying to devise some way his city could get its slice of the Lehigh Valley IronPigs pie.
Maybe, Pawlowski proposed, the IronPigs and the city can agree on how to lure some of the 500,000 fans at the stadium to travel the three miles to the downtown.
Pawlowski said he's happy the stadium and team are in his city, and said they help bring a sense of pride and raise the quality of life for people Valleywide. But even as euphoria builds toward opening day, it nags him that he couldn't persuade people to make Allentown a bigger part of the deal.
Consider Pawlowski's losing streak with the stadium:
Sorry. You are going to have to go to the link for the whole list. But, I will bring this one to the party:
No ticket tax. Pawlowski suggested the city be permitted to charge a ticket or amusement tax. But Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Northampton, said team owners would only agree to a $1.3 million-a-year stadium lease if lawmakers agreed there would be no ticket tax.
So, when Pawlowski floated an amusement tax as an option for the city to raise money from baseball, local lawmakers in Harrisburg quickly passed a law prohibiting Allentown from collecting one at the stadium -- ever.
''We had to do it,'' Boscola said. ''A deal was made, and we couldn't allow the mayor to betray it. You don't go back on your word.''
So, why did the IronPigs go with a hotel outside of Allenton?
''Actually, the Crowne Plaza was the first hotel we approached, but they weren't interested in meeting the room rate we required,'' Landes said, noting that International League criteria require a guaranteed room rate of about $75 to $85 per night. ''We consider ourselves partners with Allentown. We didn't try to avoid the city.''
Head over to the read the whole story.
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