If You Can Figure it Out: Resurrecting Hinchliffe Stadium

Baye Adolfo-Wilson ‘14

I launched my commercial real estate development company, BAW Development, LLC, in 2018, to develop transformative projects in urban (read:black) New Jersey communities.  I noticed many urban communities were only being developed or redeveloped after they became somewhat emptied, either forcibly or voluntarily. I want to develop/redevelop urban communities for the people who are living in them now.  

Baye Adolfo-Wilson at Hinchliffe

Not long thereafter, New Jersey Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, the chairperson of the New Jersey Legislative Black Caucus who grew up down the street from me in Paterson, New Jersey, asked if I was interested in helping her “get some work done in our hometown.” I said “yes,” and she proceeded to assign to me one of the most complicated project in Paterson’s history—the preservation and restoration of Hinchliffe Stadium. 

The Creation of Hinchliffe Stadium

In the late 1920s, Paterson Eastside vs Central High School needed a home for their growing Thanksgiving Day football rivalry. The City of Paterson selected a six-acre site adjacent to the Paterson Great Falls to construct their new stadium.  The city  is fifteen miles northwest of New York City  near the First Watchung Mountains -- even on a cloudy day, you can see Manhattan while seated in  Hinchliffe Stadium.  

The Olmstead Brothers developed Hinchliffe’s conceptual plan which called for a mixed-use facility that could host football, soccer, baseball, track, motor-car and motor-cycle racing.   It is an Art Deco, horseshoe-shaped, cast concrete, amphiteather-style stadium designed to hold 10,000 people.  Hinchliffe was built as a Great Depression, municipally-owned, WPA project opening in July 1932.  

1939 Newark Eagles

Hinchliffe was an affordable, rental stadium.  In the 30’s it cost $100 to rent per day, plus 25% of the gate, substantially less than the nearby NY Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, which cost between $2,500-$3,500  per day.  This affordablity made Hinchliffe an attraction for sporting event promoters, including one group making  the Stadium home, Negro Baseball teams.

In 1933, the New York Black Yankees and the Philadelphia Stars played one game of the Colored Championship of the Nation at Hinchliffe  The success of this event meant that going forward  Hinchliffe Stadium became a favorite venue of National Negro League. The New York Black Yankees, the New York Cubans and the Newark Eagles frequently used Hinchliffe Stadium as their home field.  Twenty future Major League Baseball (MLB) Hall of Famers, including Paterson’s own Larry Doby, the second black baseball player in MLB and the first in the American League, as well as  Monty Irvin, Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson played  at Hinchliffe. 

Before and after renovation

In 1963, the City of Paterson conveyed Hinchliffe Stadium to the Paterson Public School District for much-needed maintanance and repairs. When I was growing up in the 1980s, though visibly shabby, Hinchliffe Stadium’s Thanksgiving day homecoming football games continued to draw crowds of 10,000 people, but in 1991, the State of New Jersey passed legislation taking administrative control of the Paterson Public School District from locally elected officials. It was deemed a “failing public school district.”, however, many argued this action was intended to undermine the powerful, local teachers’ union.  Others felt this was retribution for the international attention caused by the movie “Lean On Me” with Morgan Freeman which depicted Paterson Eastside High School as a terror.  Whatever the motivation, under State control funding for the maintenance and operations of Hinchliffe diminished.   Finally a sinkhole formed in the northeast section of Hinchliffe Stadium in 1997, forcing it to close. At the time, it was estimated to cost $4 million dollars to repair or $4.8 million dollars to demolish the stadium, so he State did neither and Hinchliffe has been closed ever since.    

Salvaging Hinchliffe

In 2002 a group of concerned citizens called the Friends of Hinchliffe Stadium began organizing to preserve it.  Given Paterson’s weak municipal tax base and the location of Hinchliffe Stadium next to the Paterson Great Falls with Manhattan views, there was substantial pressure from the business/real estate community to demolish Hinchliffe and convert the site into condominiums. The “Friends” along with other stakeholders, managed to stop the proposed demolition by working with the National Park Service to add Hinchliffe Stadium to the National Registrar of Historic Places in 2004. 

Before I became involved in Hinchliffe Stadium, there were two other Loeb Fellows, Brent Leggs, ’11 and Monica Rhodes, ’22, who  worked to preserve and restore it.  It was listed on the National Historic Registrar in 2004, then  in 2011, Brett Leggs because of its Negro League Baseball history, submitted an application to the National Park Service to make Hinchliffe Stadium a National Historic Landmark. .  Approved in 2014, that year Monica Rhodes organized a significant two-day community event with the National Park Service and over 700 young people to remove graffiti from Hinchliffe Stadium.  That event was so successful that the City of Paterson raised a million dollars to start the pre-development design process for the preservation and restoration of Hinchliffe.  

Hinchliffe under construction

Resurrecting Hinchliffe Stadium

In 2017, the City of Paterson placed the Hinchliffe Stadium predevelopment/conceptual design process on hold after the Mayor, Joey Torres, was jailed for using municipal employees to work on his personal properties.  Then in 2018, after my conversation with Assemblywoman Sumter, she set up a meeting with Paterson’s new Mayor, Andre Sayegh. who ran and was elected on a platform to expand tourism in and around the Paterson Great Falls as one of his top priorities.  Three-hundred thousand people annually visited the Paterson Great Falls without a restaurant, parking garage, or retail.  Mayor Sayegh wanted to capture those spending dollars in Paterson and expand development around the Great Falls. 

Mayor Sayegh had been  an advocate for the restoration of Hinchliffe Stadium prior to his election.  I spoke to him about my professional experiences in the City of Newark.  A few days later, after doing his own due diligence to determine the next steps Mayor Sayegh authorized release of the remaining predevelopment funding form me to begin  the schematic design process with the local architects, CCH. 

The State of New Jersey returned the Paterson Public School District to local control in 2019.  The City of Paterson and the Paterson Public School District established a shared service agreement to operate, manage, and restore Hinchliffe Stadium.  The Paterson Public School District was opposed to selling  the Stadium, but, if we could figure out the financing strategy, they agreed to provide my company with a long-term lease for one dollar a year provided  Paterson Public School District was to be the first tenant and would have 180 days annual use.  

With that stipulation, I knew that as great as the Hinchliffe Stadium restoration story was, it would not be attractive to most commercial real estate developers Therefore, given my experience completing several mixed-use, multiple tax credit, public/private partnerships as Deputy Mayor/Director of Economic Development and Housing for the City of Newark I decided that I would be the developer of Hinchliffe Stadium, but I would need a partner.

Renovated stadium with new housing

I worked with the City of Paterson to develop a financing strategy that committed Paterson’s state set-aside tax credits to Hinchliffe Stadium.  We added housing, a museum, a parking structure and a food court—all uses that had funding streams which allowed us to include new market, low-income housing and historic tax credits, respectively, in the financing.  I spoke to a commercial real estate developer and friend, Edward Martoglio, CEO of RPM Development, one of the largest affordable housing developers in New Jersey, and he agreed to partner with me. 

On May 15, 2021, we closed on the construction/bridge loan with a 75-year lease from the Paterson Public School District for Hinchliffe Stadium with two additional fee simple parcels from the City of Paterson.  We named the project the Hinchliffe Stadium Neighborhood Restoration Project (HSNRP).  The HSNRP includes: (1) preserving and restoring a 7,800 seat Hinchliffe Stadium for track and field, football, baseball, soccer, and for concerts and festivals, (2) seventy-five units of affordable senior housing, (3) 315 space decking deck and (4) a 12,000 square foot restaurant and exhibition space dedicated to Negro League Baseball.   In September 2022, we signed the New Jersey Jackals baseball team, a member of the Frontier/MLB affiliate league, as a secondary tenant at Hinchliffe Stadium. 

In December 2022, we partnered with Montclair State University (MSU) to manage and operate Hinchliffe Stadium Museum, which came with a $5 million dollar donation from a JFK(Central) High School and MSU alumni, Charles Muth.  The total budget for this project is $103 million dollars.  The ribbon cutting is May 11, 2023.   

Preparing for the May, 2023 opening