More band-aid funding approved for aging Potomac Nationals home

Updated

Jeff Porter asked a question in the comment section about how much the Potomac Nationals are paying to lease the stadium from the county. 

We asked Prince William County Parka and Recreation Department spokesman Brent Heavner. Here’s his response: 

The revenues vary as the Potomac National’s lease payment amounts are determined by electricity usage…

Basically, the team is invoiced at the beginning and end of each season for the cost of electricity used less those costs associated with activities scheduled in the Stadium which are not associated with the Potomac Nationals such as usage for other groups and activities. 

For calendar 2014, the Potomac Nationals paid $32,652.33 in lease payments.

For fiscal 2015, they paid $34,381.07.

The Potomac Nationals are required to pay for the upkeep of the playing field.

Original post: 

Don’t ever say Prince William County doesn’t support its minor league baseball team.

County leaders this week approved an additional $114,938 for the second and final phase of a repair project at an aging Richard G. Pfitzner Stadium in Woodbridge, which first opened in 1983 and is home to the Potomac Nationals.

The money will be spent to complete a project started last year to repair the stadium’s grandstand seating area after rust was found in 2014. When completed later this year, the cost of the rest repair and seating stabilization project will have cost taxpayers a total of $249,508, according to county spokesman Jason Grant.

The repair work is being done between games as to not stop any of the action on the field, or the popular Saturday night fireworks shows.

“This is to make the grandstand sound,” said parks and recreation director Debbie Andrew.

Taxpayers foot the bill for the repairs because the county’s parks and recreation department owns the stadium. The Potomac Nationals lease the space from the county.

These latest repairs are several in a long line of maintenance fixes done to the complex since the 1980s.

The stadium, when compared to others in minor league baseball, is small and outdated. A replacement stadium to be located at Stonebridge at Potomac Town Center behind a Wegmans grocery store has been in the works for the past five years.

The plans for the stadium include box seats, a club-level restaurant open 365 days a year, and a total of 6,000 seats. A Washington Post reporter on the day in 2011 officials announced a new stadium would be built asked team owner Art Silber how he would pay for the new complex.

“I’m going to write a check,” he quickly replied.

At the time, the prospect of building a new stadium without the team owner going hat in hand to county taxpayers for money to construct a ballpark the was lauded by county officials like Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart.

Virginia officials also agreed to provide funding to a build a covered parking garage next to the stadium so fans could park there for evening and weekend games, and for events, while giving commuters and slugs additional parking on weekdays.

We were told last year that finding a naming rights sponsor was holding up the process of constructing the new stadium. Silber said in September 2015 that he expected to have the deal done by December of that same year. 

We’re still waiting for an announcement.

Gainesville District Supervisor Peter Candland, who filled in for Stewart on Tuesday who is away at the Republican National Convention where Donald Trump will be announced the GOP nominee, asked parks director Debbie Andrew about the progress of the new stadium.

“I know there some things you can say, and there are probably can’t say,” prefaced Candland in his question to Andrew.

It was almost as if he was expecting not to get a straight answer. 

Andrew replied and said she hasn’t been privy to discussions of a new ballpark, and Acting County Administrator Christopher Martino quickly quelled the line of questioning by telling Supervisors he had planned to discuss the stadium that day during a closed-door session.

Candland moved on, and the Board voted to fund yet another band-aid for Pfitzner.