By Walter Elliott
MONTCLAIR / PATERSON – When “Play Ball!” is to be said for the first time in a renovated and expanded Hinchliffe Stadium as scheduled on May 20, there are some visible and hidden ties to Montclair institutions and individuals some eight miles south.
The New Jersey Jackals’ move from Yogi Berra Stadium on Montclair State University is the most obvious current connection.
Paterson native and future Montclair resident Larry Doby, Sr., who would become the second Major League Baseball player and the first in the American League to break ball club owners’ color-barring “gentlemens’ agreement,” got a contract from the Negro Leagues’ Newark Bears based on his performance here at Hinchliffe Stadium.
Back to today, Montclair’s BAW Development helped close the original $94 million in public and private funds to get the Hinchliffe project ground broken in late 2020. BAW Development’s namesake is Paterson native and former Newark Economic Development Deputy Mayor Baye Adolfo-Wilson, Esq.
The project is more that renovating the 1932-era municipal/Paterson Public School stadium whose 10,000 seat grandstand and interior were condemned in 1997.
The back-to-the original 7,500-seat open air stadium is to include the Huth Museum to honor its 1930-s-80s heyday of baseball and football games, short track auto racing, prizefighting, concerts and other public events.
There will be modern broadcasting facilities and a food court. There is a 317-space parking garage that the compact stadium by The Great Falls could have used post-World War Two.
There is an attached 75-unit senior citizens apartment building – which Montclair’s RPM Development is taking residency applications for.
Most of the above additional features, however, have been delayed for a later-in-the-season opening. Developers’ and subcontractors’ energy has been focused on the last month to get the Hinchliffe baseball diamond ready for minor league and high school play.
The inaugural Joe Briggs Classic for Paterson area high school baseball teams, for example, was played at nearby William Paterson University. Bad weather hampered the installation of artificial turf.
Gov. Phil Murphy, on May 1, sent an extra $2 million to help the Hinchliffe project be open on May 20. The funds came from the state’s Economic Development Authority.
Some observers, however, are asking “Where did the additional $8 million from the state in January 2021 go?”
Michael Powell, Paterson’s Economic Development Director, said on April 12 that the $8 million State Legislature-approved grant was “passed through” to Life Management of Montclair.
Life Management, according to its online description, is a non-profit agency that supplies free social services to residents in 12 public buildings in Essex and Hudson counties. It has an office in the same Montclair building with RPM Management.
Powell was asked why Life Management, an agency which has nothing to do with construction projects, received the $8 million.
“This is how you do complex deals with complex financing,” said Powell.
Both Powell and the Hinchliffe redevelopers, in separate statements, said that they were using Life Management’s non-profit status to help the project qualify for state tax credits.
A February 2021 NJ DEA memo stated that Life Management’s revenue from the tax credit sale would go towards “a contribution to the Hinchliffe project.”
An investigative reporter found in April, however, that Life Management’s Montclair office appears vacant. Its telephone answering machine says, “The person you’re trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time.”
Other people in 77 Park St. said that LM workers and office appear “sporadically.”
Powell, when asked, said that LM is not “a shell company” but “I think they run a bare bones operation. They have a board of directors.”
LM’s 2019 nonprofit federal tax return listed $819,312 in revenue and $736,674 in expenses. The expenses include a $74,900 salary for an executive director who works 20 hours a week.
