Mayor Wu announces White Stadium lease deal with Boston Unity Soccer

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced Monday that the city has reached a lease deal with Boston Unity Soccer Partners to use White Stadium in Franklin Park as the new home for Boston's National Women's Soccer League franchise.

"As of this morning, Boston has signed a lease with Boston Unity Soccer Partners to open up the largest investment into Boston Public Schools athletics and White Stadium since it opened in 1949," Wu said.

"This is a very proud and exciting moment for our city, Boston Public Schools students and our club," Boston Unity Soccer Partners founder Jennifer Epstein added. "We are incredibly proud that our home will be in the heart of the city."

Wu said she didn't want to wait until after the holidays to announce the news.

"We know that it's been a long, intensive process of working through all the various pieces. We also know there's been tremendous community interest and we had promised to share all the details as soon as they were finalized," she said.

The lease is for 10 years, with two 10-year extensions. It calls for Boston Unity to pay the city $400,000 a year in rent, with annual increases of 3%, along with a 10% revenue share for all stadium and field naming revenue and a 3% revenue share for concessions.

Read the full 321-page lease agreement here.

An operations and maintenance reserve fund will also be set up, with contributions made by the soccer club. Financial safeguards were included to protect the city in case for any reason the project cannot be completed or if financing is not secured.

Boston Unity will also make an annual $500,000 contribution ito a community annual fund, increasing by 3% each year, and $1 from every ticket sold will go into a Franklin Park preservation fund. A tree bank is also being established where the city and the soccer club will plant more than 500 trees in Franklin Park in the coming years.

After the renovations, Wu said the rundown facility will have at least 700 hours available annually for Boston Public Schools and for community events. In addition to a new professional-grade grass field, it will include a new regulation 8-lane track, brand new locker rooms and community space. The existing tennis courts and basketball courts outside the stadium will be refreshed, and public restrooms and water fountains added. Existing stormwater issues will also be addressed.

"It's going to have incredible ripple effects across the entire community," the mayor said.

Read the full 52-page stadium use agreement here.

Meanwhile, the Franklin Park Defenders, a group of local citizens group opposed to the plan, issued a statement following Wu's press conference saying they see "serious flaws" with the lease agreement.

“For months, city officials and BOS Nation’s wealthy investors hid the details of their secret negotiations from the public. Now that they’ve finally signed a lease for the privatization of White Stadium, it’s clearer than ever: this is a terrible deal for Boston,” resident Renee Stacey Welch said in the statement. “It’s a massive giveaway of taxpayer dollars to private investors that puts Boston on the hook for future cost overruns, all for an oversized project that would forever damage Franklin Park."

“Boston residents, park users, and the BPS community deserve a more affordable public renovation of White Stadium, rather than a giveaway of precious city resources. We believe there are other ways to invest in Franklin Park and White Stadium that would receive the full support of park users, neighborhood organizations, and community leaders,” Emerald Necklace Conservancy President Karen Mauney-Brodek added.

The city and Boston Unity have said the new stadium and complex would host the new BOS Nation FC, provide a state-of-the-art facility for Boston Public School students to use as their home turf and still be available for community use. BPS, which operates the existing stadium, cannot afford to renovate it alone, the city has said.

The Boston Globe reported last week that the total cost of the project had about doubled to nearly $200 million, with the city's estimated share of the construction costs rising from $50 million to $91 million. And while the NWSL expansion team expects to start play in 2026, a trial scheduled for March in a lawsuit lodged by local opponents is now threatening that timeline.

State House News Service contributed to this report.