Joliet Slammers rent break undecided

The Joliet City Council will likely vote Feb. 2 on the proposed rent break for the Joliet Slammers.

The Slammers plan to host baseball with fans in the seats at city-owned DuPage Medical Group Field for a second consecutive year amid the COVID-19 pandemic but are looking for a break in rent, pointing to a financial loss suffered in 2020.

“It was not pretty from a financial standpoint,” team majority owner Nick Semaca told the City Council on Tuesday.

The council reviewed the Slammers’ proposed rent reduction for both the 2020 and 2021 seasons but did not vote on it.

Assistant City Attorney Chris Regis said Friday that a rent proposal will be prepared for the Feb. 2 council meeting.

The Slammers want rent based on 6% of revenue rather than a flat rate of $116,500, which would reduce 2020 rent to $44,600. The proposal is based on the 6% of revenue that $116,500 represented in the pre-COVID season of 2019.

The Slammers lost $365,000 in 2020 with an average attendance of 132 people a game under COVID-19 restrictions but made Joliet one of two cities in Illinois to open the gates for fans to see professional baseball during the pandemic, Semaca said.

“What we did was pretty unique last year, and we got a lot of attention for it and the city got a lot of attention for it,” Semaca said, noting national media coverage.

The Slammers hosted a four-team tournament that lasted eight weeks after the Frontier League season was canceled due to COVID-19.

“We’re planning on playing as a league, but we’re doing some contingency planning for 2021,” Semaca said. “Maybe we need to be thinking about what we did last year, which is a modified league.”

Council members did not indicate how they would vote but asked questions about what cuts the Slammers made in expenses, efforts to stage other events than Slammers games, and COVID-19 relief revenue the team received.

Semaca said the team did get $150,000 in COVID-19 relief, reduced its front office staff to four, and lost other events that were canceled because of the pandemic.

The proposed rent break was criticized by resident John Sheridan, who said the council should consider abandoning the downtown stadium.

“The Stadium Committee and the City Council should look at ways for dumping this money pit,” Sheridan said.

Sheridan also criticized the Slammers for not disclosing the stadium naming-rights agreement with DuPage Medical Group until the document was made public in a settlement of a lawsuit filed by The Herald-News.