McCoy ?should be ?Sox home

The region’s leaders should be working together to keep the PawSox in Pawtucket.

McCoy Stadium is a place where a family of six can attend a game and each family member could have a hot dog and a soda for less than $60.

The low-income residents of the Blackstone Valley area deserve a chance to watch and get the autographs of future Hall of Fame baseball players.

The key to keeping the PawSox in Pawtucket is increasing McCoy Stadium’s seating capacity to 12,000 fans, upgrading the team locker rooms and other team facilities and making it easier for fans to get to McCoy Stadium. Funding to accomplish these goals would come from a $1 surcharge on each ticket sold. Based on 72 home games each year, approximately $1.5 million would become available every two years to accomplish these goals. After eight years, every goal should be achieved, and no local tax dollars, bonding or donated land would be involved.

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To make it easier to get to McCoy Stadium, federal funding should be sought to upgrade the Providence & Worcester rail right of way that parallels the George R. Bennett Highway in Pawtucket. This 1-mile upgrade would make an MBTA commuter rail connection from Boston to McCoy Stadium possible.

Federal funds also should be sought to build a 4-mile bike path along this same P&W right of way connecting the East Bay Bike Path at the Washington Bridge in East Providence to McCoy Stadium.

The new MBTA commuter rail station at McCoy and the new bike path would be a catalyst that would lead to increased private economic development around the stadium.

At the end of eight years, the new owners of the PawSox would have a state-of-the-art Triple-A stadium that could be reached by road, rail and bike path, that would save them over $60 million and that also would reduce Rhode Island’s carbon emissions. •
Kenneth Berwick is a retired school teacher in the Lincoln school system.

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