Maryland Gov. Wes Moore expressed confidence Wednesday that the state and the Orioles will execute a new lease for Oriole Park at Camden Yards by the end of the year, when the current lease expires.
“We’ve been working all throughout the weekend and in the week with all of the partners, and we feel very confident that a deal is imminent,” Moore, a Democrat, told reporters.
“When do you think that will be?” Moore was asked. His answer: “Imminent.”
The state and the Orioles had reached an agreement covering the lease of the stadium for the ballclub, as well as development rights around the stadium late last week. But the deal was put on hold Friday — just before a planned public announcement — when Senate President Bill Ferguson expressed reservations.
Both sides are working toward the end-of-year deadline, mindful that any agreement must be approved by the Maryland Stadium Authority’s board of directors as well as the state Board of Public Works, which is comprised of the governor, comptroller and treasurer.
Moore spoke to reporters following Wednesday’s Board of Works meeting, which he referred to multiple times as the last “regularly scheduled” meeting of the year.
Moore has expressed this kind of confidence multiple times this year, and there were numerous signs that a deal was close — including in late September when Moore and Orioles CEO and chairman John Angelos appeared on the Camden Yards video board announcing an agreement that turned out to be a nonbinding memorandum of understanding. The deal was close again last week before it unraveled.
The governor said that a short-term deal is not under consideration.
“We are going to make sure that this is a long-term deal. We’re not going to do a one-year, we’re not going to do a short-term deal,” Moore said. He repeated his position that the other priorities are to create “winners off the field” and to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars.
“My benchmarks for how this deal is going to be negotiated and completed — they have not moved and they are not going to move,” he said.
Later in the afternoon, the governor added that landing a deal with the Orioles has become a personal passion.
“I’m pretty unemotional when it comes to negotiations and I’ve negotiated a lot of deals in my life,” he said when asked about the deal at an unrelated news conference. “But I’d be lying if I said that this wasn’t personal. Because these are my O’s. But also, I know what they mean to Baltimore, I know what they mean to the state of Maryland, I know what they mean to this region.”
Treasurer Dereck Davis, a Democrat, told reporters he was “fairly comfortable” with the deal that was presented on Friday. But he is elected to his post by state lawmakers, and represents their perspective.
Davis said that he believes the negotiators are working to address the Senate president’s concerns, particularly over part of the deal that would give the Orioles a 99-year ground lease on the B&O Warehouse, the empty Camden Station building, and an adjacent strip of parking for redevelopment plans that have yet to be defined.
“Obviously, we want to do what’s best for the state of Maryland and the City of Baltimore, and we’re in partnership with the Orioles and Major League Baseball ... but it’s imperative that we’re being wise stewards with the taxpayers’ money,” Davis said.
Davis said “things are evolving” in the negotiations, and said he isn’t surprised that things are going down to the wire.
“If you follow sports closely, even in a political process, deals are always fluid,” he said. “They’re on the brink of collapse, always. And they come together at the end.”
He added: “I fully expect that something will come together real soon. That’s just how negotiations are.”
Davis predicted the Board of Public Works would convene again to consider an Orioles lease and development deal “before the holidays start” — which would place a meeting sometime before the end of next week.
The third member of the Board of Public Works, Democratic Comptroller Brooke Lierman, did not speak to reporters following the meeting. On Monday, her office issued a statement saying that she is “committed to accountability to taxpayers and securing the best value for Marylanders.”
The Baltimore Orioles did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Baltimore Banner reporter Andy Kostka contributed to this article.
