popsicledeath
Potato del Grande
38 never, ever had a chance of turning a profit. That place was an utterly dysfunctional mess being run by completely incompetent people.
After Schilling burned through millions of his own dollars he turned to every ball player and private firm he could find, everyone turned him down because 38 was a stupidly bad investment. This was when the people running the RIEDC and private its backers realized they could use Curt and the studio to skim money from taxpayers by taking fees on a deal the state had no business being involved in. It was always a scam because the RIEDC had to publicly make the deal look great by inflating numbers and Schilling would have agreed to literally any terms to get that money because he had absolutely no other choice other than go out of business.
By far the best move was what Chafee did by not releasing the extra funds once 38 started missing payments. There was no point in throwing good money after bad and causing the company to collapse sooner rather than later was by far the best option. RI was never going to see a cent of that money back and in the end, after recovering as much as they could from all parties involved, the state seems to only be on the hook for a few million rather than the tens of millions they would have wasted had they kept shoveling money into that furnace.
I'm not sure why you quoted me, but thanks and good post.