What’s The Next Step with Harry Grove Stadium Lease?

George Wenschhof

Originally published 8-21-2011

The handling of the lease of Harry Grove Stadium by the City of Frederick has raised more questions than was intended since Mayor Randy McClement issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) back in the spring of this year.

Rather than dwell on the less than satisfactory manner the award process has been to date, it would behoove the mayor and aldermen to examine the options available to them to ensure the city ends up with the best terms available for the use of the stadium – city residents deserve no less.

Public scrutiny of the terms of the lease agreement being negotiated by the city with The Keys has highlighted significant income differences to the city in various areas compared with the terms proposed by Frederick Atlantic LLC. Some of these areas were discussed in my column published on August 17, 2011.

In that column, I also pointed out the mayor and board of aldermen had never really discussed the pluses and minuses of charging for parking, stadium naming rights, and various billboard advertising options which have been identified as potential revenue streams for the city.

The lack of effort by the city to limit excessive pricing of concessions at the stadium was another disappointment discovered as the award process/lease negotiations have played out.

Rather than conduct a do-over of the issuance of the RFP, the possibility exists for the mayor and/or board of aldermen to require a few additional steps be taken prior to the ratification of the stadium lease.

While, the city RFP review committee has recommended The Keys and lease negotiations are taking place with them, no formal action has been taken by the mayor and board to affirm/confirm the recommendation by the review committee.

In addition, no lease agreement has been presented to the mayor and board for an official vote.

The intent of these proposed additional steps prior to ratifying a lease agreement would be to ensure the city receives the best lease possible from the two respondents to the RFP.

Prior to continuing lease negotiations with The Keys, discussion should take place in the next city mayor and board workshop with an agreement to implement the following steps:

First, review the Harry Grove Stadium financial pro forma (AL v. Keys and Proposed Keys Lease) prepared by Aldermen Karen Young – confirm the projected city expenses portion with city financial staff – instruct RFP review committee to use the projected city expenses when they evaluate clarified lease offers received in step three.

Second, decide on what additional revenue streams are acceptable to the city. This would include naming rights and a determination on “what” is available to be named, parking revenue, billboard advertising, and the price of concessions.

Third, instruct the RFP review committee to request private and separate oral presentations from both bidders (allowable under the RFP issued) to clarify their proposed terms based on the agreed upon additional revenue streams from the decisions made in the mayor and board workshop in step two.

This is important as City administrator Josh Russin in an article written by Katherine Heerbrandt in the Frederick Gazette was quoted as saying "The changed items — the split in revenues for signs and parking — were not part of the selection committee's purview, and only came up in the negotiations process."

In addition to clarifying proposed revenue splits on the agreed upon additional revenue streams, if any other areas of the submitted proposals need to be discussed to ensure “apples are being compared to apples”, the review committee would have the opportunity to do so at this time.

Fourth, have the RFP review committee (or a designee, if privacy is preferred) present in a mayor and board workshop, their ranking of the two proposals and their subsequent recommendation.

Unless, objection to the recommendation is heard from a majority of the aldermen at the workshop, the finalization of the lease agreement would then take place to be formally ratified at a following mayor and board meeting.

These steps should have been taken in the first place to ensure transparency and to preserve the integrity of the Request for Proposal process.

It is not too late for them to still happen – city residents deserve it.

Stay tuned…

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