New soccer team finds ’24 home at Beirne Stadium
PROVIDENCE — The soccer team that’s coming to Rhode Island has announced the temporary home where it will play while its Pawtucket stadium gets built: Bryant University’s Beirne Stadium.
Rhode Island FC will play in the USL Championship, the second tier of American men’s soccer. It’s slated to kick off in the USL’s 2024 season, but the team’s permanent stadium in Pawtucket — which remains under construction even as the project faces financing uncertainties — won’t be ready in time.
Instead it will begin play in a temporary home in Smithfield.
“Professional soccer is coming to Rhode Island in 2024,” Rhode Island FC President Brett Luy said in an e-mail to season ticket deposit holders. “We are committed to creating a uniquely Rhode Island fan experience from our opening match. Our club will kick off USL action in 2024 at Bryant University while we complete construction of a world-class stadium at Tidewater Landing. This decision will allow the club to focus on the fan experience in the inaugural season and prioritize the work necessary to field a team that is ready to compete for trophies from the opening match.”
The team’s future home in Pawtucket, called Tidewater Landing, has faced multiple delays, but construction on the stadium has started, even as the developer works to close a gap on the private financing side of the $124 million project.
Brett Johnson, the founder of the team and of stadium developer Fortuitous Partners, told the Globe in an interview last month at his office in Los Angeles that the gap was about $10 million out of $50 million in upfront equity investments, which he was confident in closing. Johnson also said he expected to have the gap closed in late June, with the stadium ready to host games in the 2025 season.
No public money has flowed to the project yet, the private and public parties say. Public financing makes up about $45 million of the stadium’s cost. The private side says it’s put nearly $30 million into the development so far, and construction is not just ongoing but “accelerating.”
The overall Tidewater Landing project is supposed to also have other development, like housing, but it’s unclear how much more that will cost and when, exactly, it will be built.
Recent USL Championship seasons have run from March to October.
Bryant is no stranger to pro sports; its athletic facilities were once home to the New England Patriots’ training camp.