Ballpark plans strike out, but some hold hope

<p>A baseball investor and the Sonoma-Marin Fair have parted ways after negotiations to build a minor league ballpark at the fairgrounds fell apart.</p><p>But that doesn’t necessarily mean the end of baseball in or near Petaluma, some said.</p><p>“I feel as strongly today as I ever have that Petaluma is a fabulous location for minor league baseball,” said Merritt Paulson, the 33-year-old NBA marketing executive who first publicly proposed a Petaluma baseball team two months ago.</p><p>Paulson wanted to buy a single-A team in the California League, move it to Petaluma and build a stadium in time for the 2008 season. But plans for a ballpark on the site of the Petaluma Speedway collapsed over the question of whether Paulson’s company could guarantee the fair wouldn’t lose money on the deal.</p><p>“There wasn’t enough there to guarantee we would not lose money,” said Brian Sobel, one of two fair board members who negotiated with Paulson.</p><p>“We were never going to make a lot of money on this thing,” Sobel said. “What we could not do is deal with coming up short.”</p><p>Faced with the loss of the speedway, which brings in $100,000 a year, and other events, along with the cost of expanding the parking area, the fair projected it could lose as much as $260,000 a year, said manager Tawny Tesconi.</p><p>“That’s a big chunk of change for us,” she said. “Public agencies are not risk takers. We have a fiduciary responsibility to the public.”</p><p>Sobel said although the losses were a worst-case scenario, the profit margins on the deal were so thin that the fair asked Paulson to guarantee revenue as a way to “bridge the problem.”</p><p>But Paulson, who committed to spending $20 million to build the stadium, $4 million to buy the team and offered a share of concessions and advertising revenue to the fair, said he couldn’t take further financial risk by guaranteeing money.</p><p>“We decided that ultimately, the deal didn’t work, given what our risk thresholds were,” he said. “It just didn’t make sense.”</p><p>But Paulson said he’s still interested in owning a baseball team and plans to look for other sites.</p><p>“I am very interested in minor league ownership and operation,” he said. “It’s got to be a situation that makes business sense for us.”</p><p>The attraction of the fairgrounds site, in addition to its central location and proximity to the freeway, was that he would not have to buy the 10-12 acres of land where the speedway currently sits, Paulson said. He planned to lease the site from the fair for $1 a year, for an initial term of 30 years.</p><p>“Certainly, buying the land wouldn’t have worked from our economic standpoint,” Paulson said.</p><p>At least one city official hopes the two sides will reconsider. Councilmember Mike Healy, who is running for mayor, said at an Oct. 5 candidates forum that he’d like to see the negotiations continue.</p><p>“Sometimes the risk of not taking action outweighs the risk of getting out of your comfort zone and doing something new,” Healy said. “I hope there is a future for baseball in Petaluma.”</p><p>Petaluma Mayor David Glass, who helped facilitate the baseball plan after Paulson’s representatives contacted him about locating a team in Sonoma County, said the proposal faced obstacles but was a bonafide idea that would have helped keep the fairgrounds site in Petaluma.</p><p>“I thought it was the best offer we were going to see in order to save the fair in perpetuity in the heart of Petaluma,” he said.</p><p>He’s hopeful that Paulson will find a nearby site, but agreed that the cost of land is a hurdle.</p><p>“If it didn’t fly on this parcel, it wouldn’t fly anywhere,” Glass said.</p><p>Nevertheless, “I think Sonoma County is an option for him. I hope somewhere soon, we’ll have a wonderful amenity,” Glass said.</p><p>Both Glass and Sobel expressed hope that the discussions will at least spark new talks between the city and the fair board, a relationship that had cooled in recent years.</p><p>In the past month council members and candidates running for council talked about getting more access to the fairgrounds for recreation and sports, including playing fields for youth, as part of agreeing to extend the fair’s lease to accommodate a stadium.</p><p>With four new council members taking office in January, “I think it’s an opportunity to sit down and have some discussions,” Sobel said.</p><p>The baseball talks were “the beginning of having discussion between the entire City Council and the entire fair board,” Glass said. “That process has been started.”</p><p>(Contact Corey Young at cyoung@arguscourier.com)</p>