Corporate sponsorship can be an effective way for businesses to defray building and operating costs.
Take Sterling Equities, which owns the New York Mets. It recently announced that the baseball team”™s new stadium, set to open in 2009, will be called Citi Field, after Citigroup Inc. The decision came despite public protest that the stadium should be named after Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball”™s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
Under the arrangement, Citigroup will pay $20 million a year for the next 20 years for the naming rights of the stadium, which will cost approximately $420 million to build.
In a similar vein, might we one day see the MasterCard Emergency Pavilion at Westchester Medical Center?
That was one idea mentioned in a discussion of ways to improve the medical center”™s finances during a breakfast with members of the county Board of Legislators at the Westchester Marriott in Tarrytown.
County Legislator Judith Myers, D-Mamaroneck, brought up the idea, saying there should be more public/private partnerships with the med center.
“I think we are sitting on the edge of a great opportunity,” she told the audience at the March 15 event, sponsored by the Westchester County Association. “Corporations can step up to the plate, even more than they already do.”
Myers said the continued vitality of the Westchester Medical Center is crucial in enticing business to relocate or expand in the county.
“The business community needs a world-class tertiary-care facility,” she said.
The med center discussion began in response to a question about whether the facility should be brought back under Westchester County”™s auspices, since the county already subsidizes part of the facility”™s costs.
County Legislator Michael Kaplowitz, D-Somers, chairman of the Budget and Appropriations Committee, said the center”™s financial problems between 2002 and 2005 occurred “because expenditures went on unabated.”
“We had to step in and we did,” he said.
Kaplowitz said, “We cannot allow (the center) to fail.”
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After the meeting, Board of Legislators Chairman Bill Ryan, D-White Plains, said the consensus among legislators is that the center should stand on its own.
He expressed hope the facility would no longer need Pitts Management Associates Inc. of Baton Rouge, La. Since 2004, administrators brought in through Pitts, under an agreement extended in 2005 and set to expire at the end of this month, have managed the facility.
“The Legislature feels that permanent management is important ”¦ Permanent management over there is a sign of stability,” he said.
The med center”™s board of directors has the final say as to whether Pitts is retained. The Board of Legislators passed a resolution that stated its desire for the facility to transition to permanent management and forwarded the resolution to the hospital board.
“While fully acknowledging the good job (Pitts) has done, they were never meant to be permanent,” Ryan said.
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