By Steve Klamkin WPRO News
Stefan Soloviev took a private tour of McCoy Stadium with Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien Thursday, and said he was impressed with the former home to the now departed Pawtucket Red Sox, and will press ahead with his attempt to buy the property and bring professional baseball back to the site.
“The mayor and I, you know, we talked for a while alone and we had a good, a good walk-around,” Stefan Soloviev told reporters, who were barred from the more than hour-long tour of the stadium, first built in 1942, but vacated by the Boston Red Sox’ Triple-A affiliate Pawtucket Red Sox after the 2019 season, when the team moved to a newly-built stadium in Worcester.
Soloviev, a billionaire who said his principal business is agriculture and grain, grew interested in the ballpark when his son Quintin flew a drone over McCoy for a video overview.
“We walked through this, they’re going to put a proposal forward,” said Mayor Donald Grebien following their tour. He is balancing the city’s commitment to tear down the stadium and build a new, more than $300 million facility to consolidate the city’s two aging public high schools.
“For me, the challenge has always been, and they understood the priority is the education, I have to figure out the schools, I can’t walk away, won’t walk away from that. So, we’re trying to figure out how we do that, so when they put in their official proposal, we’ll see how we work through that,” Grebien said.
The mayor said he thought that dormant stadium was in poor condition, while Soloviev said he saw potential in McCoy.
“You know, it’s funny and interesting hearing them,” Grebien said. “For me, it’s in horrible shape. You look at the pigeon stuff, you look at the leaks. But for those professionals in there they have to do their due diligence on it.”
Soloviev, who attended the University of Rhode Island and has made several million dollars in contributions to the state university said he would like to bring the property under his Soloviev Foundation, a private foundation.
“We have a foundation, I think it would fit really well into, as far as a non-profit, as far as a stadium, making it a historic site, which it is,” Soloviev said. He went on to describe how it might be used for baseball again.
“My first choice would be a single-A Red Sox affiliate. I think it would do great it it had some affiliation with the Red Sox. and if not, I think an independent team would still do well here. So you have a stadium, receiving a stadium historically, and then the single -A team or independent team would pay a market rent to the organization that made this happen,” Soloviev said.
He said he expects to send experts to look over the stadium property within about a week.
SEE Stefan Soloviev and Mayor Grebien after their tour at McCoy Stadium: https://fb.watch/lVj2GVY4XD/
