City of Joliet not telling, might not know what it gets from stadium deal

The city last week continued to keep key terms of a naming rights agreement for its stadium secret even while announcing it has been given final approval.

How much money the city is due from the agreement with DuPage Medical Group, announced May 21, has not been made public.

The length of the agreement has not been revealed.

Whether anyone at City Hall has read the agreement is not clear.

“No,” interim City Manager Martin Shanahan said Thursday when asked if he had read the agreement before giving it what he considered final approval.

Then, he said, “I’m not answering that question.”

When asked to clarify, Shanahan repeated that he would not say whether he had seen the agreement.

On Wednesday, Shanahan put out a news release announcing that he had executed a memorandum of understanding with the Joliet Slammers to satisfy the city's right to approve the terms of the agreement.

Whether Shanahan alone can give final approval may be challenged.

“I know what he’s saying, but I don’t see how we can do that,” said councilmember Pat Mudron, who is chairman of the council’s Stadium Committee.

Mudron said he believes the agreement needs to go to the committee for review and to the full City Council for approval.

“I don’t know why we wouldn’t get to see the agreement,” said Mudron, who, like other council members, has not seen it.

Joliet does not have much experience with naming rights agreements.

The first was signed before the stadium opened in 2002.

Terms were made public – $150,000 a year for 15 years with a 50-50 split between the city and the baseball team after deductions for specified reasons – and the agreement was sent to the City Council for approval.

Silver Cross Hospital, the corporate sponsor, did not renew at the end of 2016.

The stadium has not had a corporate sponsor for the past two years.

City officials might be treading carefully so as not to lose DuPage Medical Group as a sponsor.

Mudron said he does not know of anything underhanded in the agreement. He has heard that DuPage Medical Group wants confidentiality.

"I understand it as a piece of business that they don't want to put out there as to how much they would pay or how little they would pay for something like this," Mudron said.
"DuPage Medical does not want that out."

Shanahan portrayed the naming rights agreement as a private contract between DuPage Medical Group and the Slammers.

“We are not a party to that agreement,” he said.

However, the city lease with the Slammers, which spells out terms for naming rights, appears to make clear that the city owns the naming rights. The Slammers act as an agent in negotiating a naming rights agreement.

“The team shall act as the city’s exclusive agent in the selling or licensing of the naming rights to the stadium,” the lease states. “The city shall have the right to approve the terms of the naming rights agreement, which approval shall not be unreasonably withheld, delayed or conditioned.”

The lease provides for a 50-50 split between the team and the city on naming rights revenue after deductions for certain expenses.

Shanahan said the revenue is “not much” and only would describe it as “five figures,” indicating somewhere between $10,000 and $99,000.

He would not say whether he has seen a document specifying those numbers.

Mayor Bob O’Dekirk at a City Council meeting Tuesday said the deal would bring “over six figures of new revenue” to the city, although he might have been referring to money from the duration of the contract.

The Slammers lease also states the city has “the sole right to approve the name of the stadium.”

In 2017, the city even renamed the stadium without consulting the Slammers.

City officials went to a Route 66 tourism conference being held in Joliet and announced that the stadium in the future would be called Joliet Route 66 Stadium. A month later, the city council approved a resolution
officially recognizing the stadium as Joliet Route 66 Stadium.

The resolution even spelled out what would happen in case a naming rights agreement was negotiated, saying the new sponsor’s name would be attached to Joliet Route 66 Stadium, as in Joliet Route 66 Stadium at DuPage Medical Group Field.

However, the Slammers and
DuPage Medical Group dropped the
Joliet Route 66 Stadium name when they announced the naming rights agreement, saying DuPage Medical Group Field now was the official name.

The Slammers’ website now calls the stadium DuPage Medical Group Field.

Councilmember Jan Quillman at a Stadium Committee meeting last week said she hoped Route 66 would remain part of the stadium name.

“I really like the name Route 66 Stadium,” she said.