Saturday Bird Droppings: The Orioles new lease of Camden Yards hits another snag
The offseason marches on, dizzying details on the lease, and where in the world is Shohei Ohtani.
Good Morning, Birdland!
For at least a few minutes on Friday it seemed that the ever-lasting conversation around the Orioles’ lease of Camden Yards was coming to an end. Outlets were reporting that a “tentative” agreement was in place. All sides just needed to cross some T’s and dot some lowercase J’s. Hooray! But within the blink of an eye that story changed again.
Instead, it seems there remains work to do. Maryland State Senate President Bill Ferguson had some issues with the agreed upon deal. Specifically, he doesn’t love handing over a 99-year ground lease of public land to Orioles ownership, a situation that grew murky this week over the potential sale of the club. That was enough to halt talks once again.
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To be fair to Ferguson, he’s got a point! The proposed terms of the ground rent situation are laughable. The team would pay a total of $94 million over 99 years and be granted the right to develop the land. That’s $950,000 per year, a number that will only appear smaller as time marches on and inflation does its thing.
Stadium deals are notoriously cruel to the localities in which they are done. The way the Orioles are asking for their handout is quite unique. They don’t want a new stadium. After all, Camden Yards is a marquee venue in MLB specifically and professional sports at large. But they would be fine with cheap development rights to a ton of prime real estate right around the park, plus the $600 million that the state has already promised them in upgrades to the existing setup. Clever, John. Very clever.
What should be a larger part of these sorts of conversations is what, exactly, the state and city get back in return for these generous offerings. Not in a corrupt or untoward way, but literally. If the Orioles want all of this financial support, then the state and city should get an ownership stake in the team. It sounds like the Angelos family is planning to offload the Birds anyway. You want to show you’re committed to Baltimore? Let the taxpayers reap some of the revenue directly, or maybe a Green Bay Packers-style set up.
Nothing like that seems to be on the table, and you can be sure that MLB isn’t interested in setting that precedent. But it would help quell the other concern raised by Ferguson. Who exactly is going to be owning the Orioles beyond 2023?
While a sale does not appear imminent, it would seem that the Angelos family has at least floated the possibility to interested parties. The Baltimore Banner explained why it doesn’t make sense to sell while the patriarch, Peter, is alive. But given the elder Angelos’ poor health, that reality could set in sometime soon.
Different ownership groups present their own challenges, something that makes sense to be weary about when talking about such a wide-ranging deal like this.
All told, the story remains somewhat unchanged. A deal appears closer than ever and will probably get done sometime soon. Both the Orioles and the state of Maryland appear ready to go month-to-month if the December 31 expiration date comes without a resolution.
