Politics & Government
Big League Dreams Denies $450K Refund for Hercules
The city learned it will not receive an anticipated $450,000 licensing fee reimbursement from the SoCal developer.
Big League Dreams, the Southern California developer of replica-style baseball fields, is refusing to refund the City of Hercules a $450,000 licensing fee that the city should be entitled to collect, local officials said at a budget study session Wednesday night.
The city scrapped plans for building the in Franklin Canyon earlier this year, when it became apparent that plans would be politically challenging without support from ConocoPhillips, the oil company that owned the land on which the ballfield was to be built.
By that time, the city had spent more than $2 million on the project, including $450,000 for the right to use the company's logo, which should have been refundable if the city could not find a site on which to build the project.
"Big League Dreams sent a letter saying they're alleging that we didn't properly terminate the contract," Interim City Manager Fred Deltorchio told the council. "And as (City Attorney) Mick Cabral said, 'This is as predictable as the tide.'"
No one, he said, shovels out $450,000 without questioning it.
No one, that is, save the city, which from 2008 through summer 2010 paid Big League Dreams $30,000 a month for services such as “project evaluation” and “conceptualization,” which the contract said should include site visits to help the city pick a location for the ballpark and to offer advice on environmental roadblocks like traffic problems, grading and drainage.
None of that ever happened because the project never got past the first stage of securing a site on which to build the ballpark. By the time the spigot was turned off last summer, $720,000 had been paid. A final payment of $30,000 was withheld.
