Orioles and state reach tentative 30-year lease deal, sources say, pending needed approvals

After years of negotiation and a nonbinding memorandum of understanding reached in September, the Orioles and the state have reached a tentative agreement on a lease deal that would keep the club at Oriole Park at Camden Yards for at least 30 more years, according to two people directly familiar with the document.

The agreement is expected to go before the Maryland Stadium Authority board for approval during a special meeting Tuesday, according to the sources, who requested anonymity because the deal has not yet been approved.

Then it would go to the state Board of Public Works for its approval at its meeting scheduled for Wednesday. That three-person spending panel consists of Gov. Wes Moore, Treasurer Dereck Davis and Comptroller Brooke Lierman, all Democrats.

The governor’s office has not announced the agreement yet, but elected officials were being briefed about the details. The deal will not be final until it’s approved by both boards and signed by the Orioles and the state.

The Orioles, the governor’s office and the stadium authority did not reply immediately to a request for comment.

The deal would commit the Orioles to state-owned Camden Yards for decades to come, as outlined in a memorandum agreed to in September. The lease, however, would depart from the memorandum in some ways.

Under the memorandum, some stadium authority employees were at risk of losing their jobs because the MSA’s traditional maintenance and operations authority was to be transferred to the Orioles.

No MSA employee will lose their job under the new agreement, said one of the sources.

During negotiations, the MSA previously had floated a proposal under which authority employees would retain their positions, including health and retirement benefits, but be contracted out to the club. It could not be determined immediately Friday whether that was the course that was settled on.

The memorandum had faced criticism from former stadium authority officials who said it would give the Orioles too much power to spend public dollars without state oversight. Former authority Chair Thomas Kelso wrote in a Sun commentary that the memorandum would cause some stadium authority employees to lose their positions and “eviscerate the MSA’s role and responsibility at Oriole Park and reverse nearly four decades of success.”

Oriole Park at Camden Yards has been the Orioles’ home since it was built in 1992, at which point a 30-year lease was signed. Negotiations for a new lease began in 2018 under Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and his stadium authority chairman, Kelso, but the parties agreed in 2021 to extend the old agreement until Dec. 31, 2023.

The state incentivized the Orioles and the Ravens in 2022 to remain in Baltimore for decades by passing a law allowing the stadium authority to borrow at least $1.2 billion for renovations — $600 million for each stadium — as long as the teams agreed to long-term leases. The Ravens signed a lease earlier this year, extending their commitment to Baltimore from 2027 to at least 2037.

The Orioles would unlock those dollars, too, by signing their lease.

Moore and his pick for stadium authority chair, Craig Thompson, took over Orioles’ negotiations in early 2023 and at that time, Orioles Chairman and CEO John Angelos said he hoped a deal would get done by mid-July.

No lease came then, but during an Orioles game Sep. 28, the same night the club clinched the American League East title, Moore and Angelos appeared next to each other on the ballark’s video board as a 30-year deal was announced. That agreement, state and team officials later said, was a memorandum, not a formal lease.

The memorandum proposed renting state-owned land around Oriole Park, including the B&O Warehouse and Camden Station, to the Orioles for 99 years. The team would pay the state $94 million, an average of about $950,000 per year, for the right to develop that land.

Development rights are referenced in the new lease agreement, one of the sources said Friday. But it could not be determined immediately how much of the language in the memorandum also was included in the lease, or whether development rights would be more specifically addressed in another document.

Since Oriole Park was built, the team has paid the stadium authority rent, which the state used to pay for a portion of operation and maintenance costs of the stadium.  Under the memorandum, the team would cease paying rent but assume responsibility for stadium operations and maintenance.

The sources indicated there have been adjustments to that portion of the memorandum calling for the transfer of maintenance and operations responsibilities. But it could not be determined how that provision has been altered since the agreement has not been made public.