It will probably take a while to count up the money but I am eager to hear what local charities will be the recipients of the profits from the first season of baseball. El Pasoans supported the team with over 8,000 attendees per game.
The team ownership went on record telling us that their profits would be donated to local charities back when the whole ball park issue was being sold to us. This article in El Paso, Inc. told us “During the controversy over the plan to demolish City Hall to make way for the stadium, MountainStar Sports agreed to raise the city’s return on the stadium and to donate any profits it receives to local charities.”
We might reasonably expect that their first year expenses were higher than what will be normal. There is no provision in their contract with the city to allow us to audit their books. That’s the city’s fault. I’m not saying that the owners will lie to us. Quite to the contrary I expect that they will be honorable.
Let’s hope to see great benefit to our local charities.
We should not expect however what our former city representative and candidate for mayor told us to expect. The El Paso Times wrote this in an article:
“Both families understand that quality of life is part of the equation to making El Paso more competitive for jobs,” Ortega said, adding that the group has pledged the first 10 years of revenues to local charities.
Of course he was in office at the time so we should expect that he would not distinguish between profit and revenue.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Perhaps they can donate their profits to rebuild the Insights Science Center which was sacrificed to make way for the Margarita Bar in Right field.
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Thanks for reminding us of the team owners’ intention to donate profits. We can count on the fact that if the owners do follow through the story will be all over the EP Times. If they do not, we won’t hear a mumblin’ word.
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The biggest charitable organization in town right now is the taxpayers. One of the biggest recipients of our charity is Mountainstar.
Any Mountainstar charitable donation checks should be written to the City of El Paso to make up for the ridiculously low rent being paid by Mountainstar. That would be the “honorable” thing to do.
The anticipated charitable donations assumes there will be profit to contribute after Mountainstar’s owners load up the profit and loss statement with management fees and expenses. If there is a give-back, it will probably be just enough to justify a press conference and front-page story in the Times, glorifying our benefactors.
Mountainstar’s proud philanthropists get a discount on rent and operating expenses so that they can make a profit and then turn around and take the glory and tax write-offs for monies donated to charities. Funny how that works.
It’s just as likely that they will report a loss to gain sympathy. After all, they once said the team was a “gift” to El Paso.
Also, let’s not confuse the taxpayers’ “return on the ballpark” with profitability. Mountainstar simply agreed under pressure to pay a little more in rent and revenue sharing. ROI? We’ll never even recover the cost of the interest on the ballpark, much less make a return on this gift which was cloaked as an investment.
Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria told the council at an August 2013 special meeting that the higher interest rates related to the ballpark financing would add $17 million to total debt service costs. She said the city will pay $143 million in debt service over the 30-year span of the bonds. Total revenues pledged to support the ballpark bonds over the next 30 years is estimated at $153 million.
Even if we receive the maximum revenue share of $655,000 annually over those 30 years, we’ll only receive about $20 million, which is less than 15% of the construction and financing cost. Ms. Candelaria, however, used some of her fuzzy math and fancy presentation skills to misinform; she claimed at the same time that the ballpark-related revenues would be $153 million, her way of magically balancing the revenue with the desire spending. None of the council members questioned the coincidence.
One of the primary justifications of building the ballpark was to help attract companies to El Paso and support job creation. Yet, when businesses like do come or expand, council is quick to give tax breaks.
This helps to answer the question you raised a few days ago: “Do businesses pay their fair share?” The answer is pretty clear: Some do; some don’t.
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