It’s hard enough competing as a newcomer in an established league, as the state’s first professional soccer team, Rhode Island FC, will do beginning March 16. The team also carries the weight of public scrutiny and financing tied to a much debated $137 million soccer stadium under development in Pawtucket.
For those not in the team’s fan club, the question this year will not be how many wins the new club gets, though the more the better. It is how much momentum it can generate playing home games in its inaugural season 17 miles away in a much smaller, temporary home at Bryant University in Smithfield.
As this week’s cover story reports, the team is talking a good game heading into the new season. Its owners expect sellout crowds at Bryant, whose stadium is about half the size of the 10,000-seat Tidewater stadium.
But taxpayers will pay $132 million over 30 years to repay the bond used to help build the Pawtucket stadium. For that to pay off, the team must do more than just show up there next year.
It will need sellout crowds and a growing fan base to persuade state and city leaders and private investors to move forward with housing, a hotel, restaurants and other ancillary development. That was the original promise of Tidewater Landing and what will still be needed to make it a tax-generating destination worth the hefty, long-term public investment.
Without it, the soccer stadium will still have value to Pawtucket as a local attraction, albeit one that taxpayers outside the city may have difficulty embracing.