EXCLUSIVE: Bonds for Pawtucket Soccer Stadium Are Being Refinanced — Increase of Millions

EXCLUSIVE: Bonds for Pawtucket Soccer Stadium Are Being Refinanced — Increase of Millions

GoLocalProv has secured a copy of the bond documents issued by the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency to refinance the Pawtucket soccer stadium at more than $6 million higher than the bond package issued last year. The offering document is 384 pages.

The initial bond package issued in February of 2024 was for $54,285,000

The new bond refinancing package is for $60,220,000.

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The lead investor, Rosemawr Management, which entered the initial bond deal in secrecy in 2024, will leave the project with an estimated $6 million windfall payment and millions more for the investment of about two years due to the $8.25 interest it realized on its investment.  

Rosemawr did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Rosemawr was founded by Greg Shlionsky, a former managing director at the failed Lehman Brothers.  In 2008, Lehman filed for bankruptcy, which was a seminal moment in sparking the Great Recession.

According to a report in Bloomberg in 2023, “Rosemawr Management, an investment firm that focuses on riskier state and local government bonds, is repackaging a $500 million pool of unrated debt backed by charter schools into new securities, marking a rare effort to bring the practice to one of the bond market’s safest havens.”

“The firm is bundling bonds from 26 charter schools in 11 states and reselling them as new debt through a Wisconsin agency, the Public Finance Authority. The sale borrows a technique frequently used in other corners of Wall Street, where banks routinely bundle and resell pools of lower-rated debt to insulate investors,” added Bloomberg.

 

 

Is There a Benefit to the State? McKee Won't Say

Governor Dan McKee, who pushed through the financing scheme for the stadium and was the deciding vote to greenlight the project as the chair of the Board of the RI Commerce Corporation, did not respond to requests for comment.

The Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency, the conduit for the bonds, also did not respond to comment at the time of publication.

The stadium project was first proposed in December 2019, but after failing to secure financing, it was on and off for nearly five years. The stadium finally opened in May of 2025.

 

Another Winner

The other winner in the refinancing deal will be a cadre of law firms and investment firms that have constructed the new financing package. The exact amount will not be known until the bond package is completed, which is scheduled for June 2026.