McHenry County Blog

With entrepreneur Mark Houser still trying to get a minor league baseball stadium and team off the ground in Woodstock, I keep looking for what’s happening in other parts of the country.

This is the way into the CornBelters Stadium.

You may remember that Heartland Community College in Normal (next to Bloomington) pulled off what McHenry County College could not.  (Houser was the one pushing the MCC stadium.)

Heartland now has a minor league baseball stadium on its campus.

Patrick Wade writes in the (Champaign) News-Gazette on the economic impact of the Heartland stadium:

“Crystal Howard, the director of the BNCVB, said the Normal team had an economic impact of $300,000 in its first year. That seems like a minor dollar amount considering the Illinois High School Association wrestling state championships is estimated to bring in $5.1 million to Champaign County during the one weekend it’s in town.”

Both the Bloomington-Normal Convention and Vacation Bureau and Avon, Ohio, Mayor Jim Smith described the minor league baseball teams and stadiums as “quality of life,” rather than economic boosters for their communities.

In Avon the taxpayers are paying for the $13 million stadium. The bond payment is $600,000 a year, while the team pays $250,000 annually. The subsidy comes from a quarter of one percent income tax.

The stadium is privately owned, but it is built on community college land and I think I remember some parking lot subsidy from the city of Normal.

Finance Committee members considering award of Stimulus Bond authority. Seen from left to right are Tina Hill, John Hammerand, Dan Ryan and Lyn Orphal. Chairman Marc Munaretto is to Orphal's left.

The McHenry County Board’s Finance Committee decided to award millions of dollars of Federal Stimulus Bond authority on a “first come, first served” basis.

The first two private entities in line were sports related.

One was Mark Houser’s EquityOne’s baseball stadium, to be located in Woodstock after the McHenry County College Board’s efforts to provide taxpayer-backed bonds failed.

The second was a new proposal for a McHenry County SportsPlex located in Lakewood.

Both received support from the municipalities in question.

But, in taking a “first come, first served” approach, along with the attendant publicity, the county board was telling other potential job creators they need not apply.

The SportsPlex' field layout. Click to enlarge.

Last Friday Lakewood Village President Erin Smith issued a press release announcing that the financing could not be obtained in time to meet the December 31st deadline imposed by Federal law.

And, so, McHenry County lost the opportunity to see the money used for job creation.

While the SportsPlex did not drop out early enough to allow the subsidized interest loans to be re-directed, the baseball stadium did.

Sage Products, a provide job creator, got money to put on a addition.

One can only wonder if there were other successful manufacturers in McHenry County who were deterred from applying by the “First come, first served” loan allocation approach.

Heading north on I-55, here's the new sign you see.

Memorial Day, Normal’s CornBelters Frontier League team played its first game in its new stadium, called the Corn Crib.

They lost 3-2 to Windy City, but filled the new stadium.

The stadium is near the intersection of I-39 and I-55. I think you see a photo of it above.

It’s built on the campus of Heartland Community College.

White Sox owner Bill Veeck’s son Mike is the most familiar name.

The lights lead me to believe this is the Corn Crib statium.

Subsidies from both the college and the town of Normal subsidized the construction.

This article in All Business, a reprint of a Bloomington Pantograph article, reports the “ownership group, and not the city, owns the stadium and pays for its construction.

“‘It is an unusual deal, but I think it will be the wave of the future,’”

said team President Steve Malliet.

This drive-by shot may show the entrance of the Corn Crib.

So far, 700 season tickets have been sold. As with all minor league teams, group sales are the key to success, said Malliet.

Meanwhile, McHenry County College’s pioneering effort got mired down in Crystal Lake watershed problems and objections to MCC taxpayers guaranteeing the 25-year bonds while minor league teams go belly up every five years or so.

Developer Mark Houser showed up again in Woodstock, where he was more successful with the city council. Although he has been granted $3.5 million in TARP loan authorization by the McHenry County Board, so far he does not seem to have marshaled the financial resources to follow in Normal’s footsteps.
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Meanwhile Meijer’s has partnered with the Kane County Cougars to give away free tickets, as you can see from the press release below

MEIJER TO GIVE AWAY FREE
KANE COUNTY COUGAR TICKETS

Attention all you Cougar fans! Meijer has partnered with the Kane County Cougars for the 2010 baseball season. Customers should present their Meijer receipt at the Elfstrom box office when purchasing a 2010 Cougar General Admission ticket for any Monday home game and receive a second General Admission ticket FREE!

This offer is good for up to four free tickets with the purchase of four tickets using a single receipt. Offer begins NOW and expires September 6, 2010. Don’t miss this chance to see the Kane County Cougars in action on their home field!

For complete schedules and rosters, visit the team Web site at http://www.kccougars.com/

Actually, it wasn’t raining as I drove to Woodstock for the McHenry County Board’s Finance Committee meeting Tuesday.

“Historical.  If an existing company, balance sheet and profit & loss statement for the last three fiscal years.  Include accountant’s opinion letter and any schedules and notes to financial statements.”

“*The entity that will own and operate the stadium will be a start up company that will have no historical financial information.”

I haven’t gotten around to writing a story on baseball stadium promoter Mark Houser’s pitch to the McHenry County Board’s Finance and Audit Committee yesterday, so I would encourage you to read the stories of the other three reporters there:

Stadium Developer Asks More Time For Financing

Stimulus Bonds Delayed

Houser, of course, is one of the two promoters, the other being Pete Heitman, who pitched the McHenry County College Board to issue bonds to pay for a stadium at MCC.

A friend dropped this flying pig on my front porch last week.

I haven’t seen him in a while, but I guess I told him the story about Illinois Senate President Pate Philip’s having said the state income tax would be raised “when pigs fly.”

That was before Governor Jim Thompson somehow convinced him to get enough Republicans to vote “Yes” to hike the income tax.

Today we have McHenry County Board Republicans deciding whether a pig will fly.

The pig in question is the Woodstock baseball stadium.

If ever there were a pig in a poke, this is it.

The board’s Finance Committee meets at 9:30 this morning.

The flying pig above seems to be a hood or motorcycle ornament.  I guess it would be a “flying hog,” if put on the right motorcycle.

Toot, toot.

Or is it,

“Hoonk, hoonk?”

That train speeding down the track is the one delivering authority for the Woodstock baseball stadium developer to use $15 million in Federal Stimulus Bonds to finance their proposed stadium.

The beneficiary of this largess is Equity One Development Corporation. The application form lists Mark Houser as the 100% owner of the firm.

Here are a couple of relevant sections of the proposed resolution:

Section 1. The County meets certain conditions specified in the Act required to designate the County as a Recovery Zone, those conditions being a significant increase in the unemployment rate, an increase in the rate of home foreclosures, and general distress and the County has been designated as a Recovery Zone.

Section 2. The County Board hereby approves the Project submitted by Equity One Development Corporation and designates $15,000,000 of Recovery Zone Allocation to Equity One Development Corporation for the issuance of Recovery Zone Facility Bonds to finance the Project.

Section 3. The Allocation shall be used to issue bonds to finance the Project and said Bonds must close no later than March 1, 2010. In the event the Bonds do not close by March 1, 2010, then the Allocation shall expire and revert back to the County.

Section 4. All actions of the officers, agents and employees of the County that are in conformity with the purposes and intent of this Resolution, whether taken before or after the adoption hereof, are hereby ratified, confirmed and adopted.

Here are the committee members who will meet next Tuesday at 9:30:

Chairman: Marc Munaretto

Vice Chair: Lyn Orphal
Members: Scott Breeden, John Hammerand, Tina Hill, Daniel P. Ryan, Mary Donner

Up for election this year are

• Lyn Orphal in the Crystal Lake-Lake in the Hills District 2
• Tina Hill in Woodstock-Lake in the Hills-Huntley District 5
• Dan Ryan the Huntley, Marengo, rural Woodstock, Harvard, Hebron, Alden District 6

In yesterday’s article about this pending decision, I laid out the campaign opportunities it would offer Democrats.

The light at the end of this tunnel could be what Democrats planning to run for county board are seeing.

The local expert on stadiums is McHenry’s Steve Stanek. He is a Research Fellow with the Heartland Institute.

When I read in Kevin Craver’s article in the Northwest Herald that the McHenry County Board is thinking of awarding the largest portion of the Federal stimulus bonds to the Woodstock baseball stadium folks, I thought of Stanek and asked for his opinion.

Just in case you are interested, here is the story I wrote the night the Woodstock City Council approved the proposal.

Here’s what Stanek has to say:

“I could quote dozens of economists and public policy researchers to show how bad it would be for the County Board to grant this greedy, self-serving request for $15 million of stimulus bonds for that baseball stadium. But I will instead quote the owners of a professional sports team:

“‘The financial issue is simple, and the city’s analysts agree, there will be no net economic loss if the Sonics leave Seattle. Entertainment dollars not spent on the Sonics will be spent on Seattle’s many other sports and entertainment options. Seattleites will not reduce their entertainment budget simply because the Sonics leave,’ the Soncis said in the court brief.” — Seattle Times, Jan. 18, 2008, regarding the NBA’s Super Sonics trying to break their stadium lease to move to another city.

“Imagine: The owners of the Seattle Super Sonics said, under oath in federal court, that Seattle would suffer no economic harm if the team were to leave the city. These same owners, when arguing for huge taxpayers subsidies for KeyArena in Seattle, said the team would bring tremendous economic benefits. But of course, when they made those claims, they were not under oath in a court of law.

“When I read about this request for stimulus bonds in the (Northwest) Herald this morning, I said to myself,

‘You’d think these people would have learned from the MCC baseball stadium fiasco.’

“But then I realized this has nothing to do with good economics or benefiting the community.

“This has to do with benefiting a handful of people with lots of money and friends in high places in this county, and with making a handful of people who cast themselves as community leaders feel good about themselves.

“I am especially disgusted with the McHenry County Community Foundation. I contacted them with information about how bad it is to use subsidies to support such facilities, and I received assurances this would be entirely privately funded. (See this article.)

“Now $15 million of stimulus bonds that have been made available by the government could go to this baseball team.

“To those few local officials who might actually care about benefiting the community, I say this would be a terrible waste of resources.

“Economic studies overwhelmingly conclude sports teams return virtually nothing to the economy and sometimes actually hurt the overall economy.

“That money could be loaned far more effectively to other businesses — businesses that have been in this county for years, paying every nickel of tax local government officials can squeeze from them.

“If they don’t believe me about the overwhelming agreement among researchers about how bad such proposals are, maybe they’ll believe this:

’With most empirical issues there’s lots of debate. Does the minimum wage cause unemployment? There’s lots of debate about that issue. Here there’s no debate.’ — Vanderbilt University economist John Siegfried regarding economists against sports subsidies, quoted in Boston Globe, March 19, 2006.”

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All the photos were taken at the Woodstock City Council meeting when the proposal was approved 6-1. Top right, pointing at the plan for the stadium is Mark Houser, the man who refused to identify himself when he walked out of a secret meeting with the McHenry County College board. The MCC plan eventually died, of course. Below are Frontier League Commissioner Bill Lee and baseball team promoter Pete Heitman. The crowd that attended the Woodstock City Council meeting is seen at the bottom.

I would note that now the Democrats have two issues upon which to beat county board Republicans about the head–the upcoming Ridgefield train station vote and the baseball stadium bond vote.

Remember the

direct mail piece the Democrats put out last fall (click to enlarge) ?

I am sure the Dems will top this piece, if the county board allocates more than half of the bonds allocated for private enterprise in McHenry County to the Woodstock baseball stadium.

And think of the mailing that could be made to every small business in McHenry County:

Couldn’t get a loan last year?

The McHenry County Board could have helped you, if (you fill in the blank).

In case you have forgotten how good the “Monopoly” piece was, talk a look at

McHenry Dems Attack Republican Monopoly

Democrats Go for Republican Vulnerabilities – 1

Democrats Go for Republican Vulnerabilities – 2

Democrats Go for Republican Vulnerabilities – 3

Democrats Go for Republican Vulnerabilities – 4

County Board Plans to Buy Land to the North

Democrats Go for Republican Vulnerabilities – 5

How Is Your Town Ranked by Local Democrats?

It was political pressure that led to the release of baseball promoter buddy Mark Houser’s feasibility report after months and months of secrecy…at the meeting where the board majority censured then-Board President Scott Summers and Donna Kurtz, no less.

It was a combination of political pressure from the Northwest Herald and an almost on point May 21st Illinois Supreme Court decision ordering the release of the Wheaton Warrenville Unit School District Superintendent’s contract that led to the McHenry County Board’s back flip.

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, I’ll be at President Brian Sager’s office looking for the copy of ex-MCC President Walt Packard’s $200,000 a year golden parachute contract that I requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

I wonder if there will be any justification for giving him and his wife health benefits through August 21, 2012.

You can read the contract here.

In honor of Mark Houser and Pete Heitman’s obtaining their McHenry County dream—zoning permission to build a minor league baseball stadium in McHenry County—I post this tee shirt found in Milwaukee’s Mitchell Airport.

In case you didn’t read the article that kept me up until 3:45 AM, it is here.

It says,

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Pete Heitman is the one on the left and his partner Mark Houser of Equity One is on the right.

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Vicki Smith informed me the tee shirt was designed by her company, Eagle Sportz of Cartersville, which is located as far from Atlanta, Georgia, as Crystal Lake is from Chicago. I received the owner’s email on April 2, 2009.