As the final moments ticked down on the Orioles’ deadline to extend their stadium lease beyond 2023, the then-chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority said club chairman and CEO John Angelos left him in the dark about the team’s intentions and Gov. Wes Moore, who had decided to replace him, froze him out.
“The only way we found out” that the Orioles declined a five-year option — leaving the team with a hard Dec. 31 deadline to recommit to Baltimore — “was that it didn’t happen at 11:59 p.m.” on Feb. 1, Thomas Kelso, the authority’s former board chairman, told The Baltimore Sun.
By then it was apparent, Kelso said — from a Jan. 31 letter he had just seen from Angelos to Moore — “that John Angelos was talking directly to the governor and vice versa, and nobody in the governor’s office had been willing to talk to me since it was decided to replace me. So there was no avenue by which I could find out what the governor wanted us to do.”
Kelso described a chaotic, crucial 48 hours along the journey to where the MLB team and its landlord, the state, are today: without an agreement beyond the end of the year that binds the team to Baltimore, the talks blowing past Angelos’ own suggestion that the deal could be done by the All-Star break, and few public details about the terms under negotiation for the use of public property.
David Turner, Moore’s senior adviser and communications director, pushed back strongly against Kelso’s comments, characterizing them as “sour grapes.”
“It’s unfortunate that someone who served on the Stadium Authority since 2015 couldn’t get a deal done and is now chirping from [the] sidelines when he should stay quiet. Sour grapes from a failed leader aren’t going to stop this deal,” Turner said in a statement he provided in response to The Sun’s questions.
A spokeswoman for Angelos declined to comment.
A source told The Sun that Angelos has requested that the team pay no rent for using the stadium and wanted $300 million more than a promised $600 million for Oriole Park improvements. That source, along with three others, said Angelos also sought the commercial development rights for three stadium complex parking lots. One of the sources said Thursday that the three issues came up early in the discussions with the Moore administration, but none of the ideas are on the table.
Kelso was an appointee of former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan. Moore, the new Democratic governor, replaced Kelso on March 6.
Kelso said Friday that he was disappointed at the Moore administration’s verbal “attacks” against him and is “very proud of the work that I and the team at the MSA did over the last eight years, and I will let my record speak for itself.”
Kelso’s remarks came during an already busy week off the field for the surging Orioles. While the team maintained its surprising first-place standing in the American League East, some fans focused instead on the lease issue and a controversy over Kevin Brown, the Orioles’ play-by-play announcer on its Mid-Atlantic Sports Network.
Brown had disappeared from the booth after using team-provided statistics July 23 about the Orioles’ struggles in recent seasons at Tropicana Field, the home of the Tampa Bay Rays. After his removal became widely known Monday, fans subsequently chanted “Free Kevin Brown” during games at Camden Yards.
Brown returned to broadcasting Friday, and said on Twitter he had a “wonderful relationship” with the organization. He said “recent media reports have mischaracterized my relationship with my adopted hometown Orioles.”
Regarding the Orioles’ expiring lease, officials in Hogan’s administration had hoped to complete a new one before Hogan’s second term ended in January, a major step toward calming fans’ anxiety that the Orioles could move to another city. The current lease bars them from doing so, although Angelos has pledged repeatedly to keep the team in Baltimore.
The stadium authority was successful with the Baltimore Ravens, reaching a new lease agreement with the NFL team at the end of last year. That contract was then approved by the state Board of Public Works, comprised of the governor, state comptroller and state treasurer.
But no Orioles lease agreement has been reached. Turner criticized Kelso and the previous administration for that.
“Their inability to get a deal done is not going to hamper our eagerness to,” Turner said. “We have shown that our administration moves at a different pace and plans on completing projects that can have the short and long-term benefit of the citizens of the state.”
During Kelso’s tenure, in addition to accomplishing the new Ravens’ lease and pushing for the 2022 passage of a state law that allows the stadium authority to borrow up to $1.2 billion to pay for improvements to the pro teams’ homes, the agency also reached an agreement with the Orioles in February 2021 on a two-year extension of the team’s lease, which at that point was to expire at the end of 2021.
On Jan. 31 of this year, Angelos floated an alternative proposal to Moore for another two-year lease extension. In the early days of the Moore administration, that didn’t happen, either.
Kelso said he learned about the latest two-year proposal in an email from the stadium authority’s counsel on the evening of Jan. 31, after returning from a dinner at the Black Olive restaurant in Fells Point with Angelos and Sashi Brown, the Ravens president. Kelso said he convened the meeting to establish better communication between the neighboring teams.
Kelso said Angelos didn’t mention the two-year extension plan during the dinner or in a conversation on the street afterward.
The next day, Moore’s schedule shows that immediately after delivering his first State of the State speech, he had a 30-minute call scheduled with Angelos. A week later, on Feb. 8, attorney Craig Thompson made his first appearance on Moore’s calendar with a 45-minute meeting. Moore named Thompson on Feb. 17 to replace Kelso as chair of the stadium authority board.
Previously, the governor’s office had said in a Jan. 25 statement that the new administration “looks forward” to working with Kelso “until a new chair is in place.”
In Angelos’ Jan. 31 letter, obtained by The Sun, he told Moore he had temporarily halted the lease negotiations following the November 2022 election until Moore took office. For a period of 10 weeks, according to the letter, negotiations weren’t occurring.
However, Kelso said Angelos never told him he was suspending lease discussions, and the two continued to talk, mostly by telephone or Zoom video.
Angelos told Moore in his letter that another two-year extension was suitable for planning a partnership with the state that he believed would “set a new standard for the full optimization of a sports and entertainment stadium complex and commercial development.” Such an extension, Angelos wrote, “is the best protection for Maryland taxpayers’ investment in the highest and best development and stewardship of the Camden Yards property.”
But the stadium authority balked at the request.
“The sense of the other board members I told was that there was not an appetite to do this because nobody understood why we couldn’t get a lease done in the remaining months before Dec. 31,” Kelso said. “And, that if a lease extension was necessary, it should be decided in December based on the facts and circumstances of the lease negotiation at that time.”
Adding two years to the existing lease would have meant the Orioles would have been able to exercise a five-year option in February 2025.
A better solution, Kelso said, was to complete a long-term lease — at least 15 years.
Two or five years, he said, wouldn’t have been enough for the Orioles to capitalize on the opportunity for $600 million in stadium improvements. The new state law specifies that a lease must be long enough to pay off the longest-term bonds, and five years isn’t sufficient for major stadium improvements. With their long-term deal in place, the Ravens already have begun the process to use their own $600 million share.
Angelos and Moore have said a long-term lease is their goal, as well, and that they are confident one will be signed.
“We have the opportunity again to fortify our commitment to remain in Baltimore for as long as Fort McHenry stands watch over the Inner Harbor,” Angelos said in the letter.
Moore and Angelos have had a close working relationship. Moore featured Angelos in his 2020 book about the unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray in city police custody, while Angelos donated the maximum of $6,000 to Moore’s campaign last summer. At the Orioles’ home opener this year, Moore threw the ceremonial first pitch. He returned to the ballpark during the recent Yankees’ series to man the hose that sprays fans in the “Splash Zone.”
Hogan appointed Kelso, the president of Matrix Capital Markets Group Inc. and a donor to the Republican politician. Kelso gave $16,000 to Hogan political committees between 2014 and 2021, in addition to contributing to Democratic candidates such as Ferguson and former Baltimore mayors Sheila Dixon and Catherine Pugh, according to campaign finance records.
Kelso’s replacement, Thompson, worked for the law office of Peter Angelos — John’s father and the longtime owner of the Orioles — from 1998 to 2005. Thompson said at the time of his appointment he did not have a personal relationship with Angelos nor with any member of his family.
Baltimore Sun reporter Sam Janesch contributed to this article.
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