By: Diane Benjamin
I’ve known for quite awhile that for Bloomington Alderman Rob Fazzini had sued people involved with the Cornbelters. Since I was at the courthouse yesterday I decided to pull the court documents.
If you ever want to see a file, get the Case Number from Public Access ( https://www.mcleancountyil.gov/137/Public-Access-Search-System ), then go to the 4th floor Circuit Clerk’s office at the Law and Justice Center and ask to see it. You can look at criminal and civil court proceedings.
Rob made the mistake of loaning $50,000 at 8% interest to Normal Professional Baseball. The managing member was Steve Malliet. Steve signed a promissory note for the LLC. I believe Fazzini was involved in building the field and he may have been an investor.
The Cornbelters have been through numerous changes, none have been good. Obviously there wasn’t a demand for local professional baseball just like there wasn’t a demand for local hockey. I believe the team that exists now isn’t being paid to play, but it’s hard to keep track.
Unlike his time as alderman losing tax dollars and his position with Henson Disposal who sold the North Main property to the City for $1.4 million, this time Rob lost his own money. https://blnnews.com/2019/07/03/know-what-these-bills-are-for/
Fazzini only received 7 payments totaling $21,290.22. Rob sued for the rest and won, except Normal Professional Baseball showed the court they have ZERO dollars:
Meanwhile the LLC has been terminated:
Heartland and the Town of Normal have spent tax dollars on this fiasco too, Rob wasn’t the only only to lose money.
Fazzini got a judgement for the amount below in #7. He will never see a penny of it.
First thought that comes to mind..”Cry Me A River”. Mr. Fazzini of all people knows the definition of LLC.
A limited liability company (LLC) is a corporate structure in the United States whereby the owners are not personally liable for the company’s debts or liabilities. Limited liability companies are hybrid entities that combine the characteristics of a corporation with those of a partnership or sole proprietorship.
Was Rob under the impression that government wouldn’t let Normal Baseball fail?
They’re not in Uptown or the Rivian plant, so Koos doesn’t know they exist.
Normal gives somebody there money. I believe I saw something like $235,000 in the last 5 years.
Fazzini is a friend of government and taxpayer leech for which I despise him. I’m resisting the urge to kick sand in his face while he’s down, however, since this was a private investment made between private parties/businesses. By the way, I do wonder what on earth Fazzini was thinking by investing in the Cornbelters. Has he not been to a game and seen all the empty seats or reviewed the balance sheet? Anyway, leaving Fazzini aside for a moment, to me, this is a symptom of a wider problem in Bloomington-Normal, which is the continued malinvestment of the limited capital within the community. The capital keeps flowing into restaurants, “quality of life” businesses, and other local/unscalable ventures that rely on an increasingly lower amount of local disposable income. I’m not hearing about any investments in growing tech companies or scalable startups.
This might have had something to do with a big concert they planned that got rained out. Not sure though
The players are not paid and have host homes to live in during the season. We went to a game a few times. It was ok -not too exciting,
I don’t think the local elites realize people don’t want to sit outside to watch baseball players they don’t know. Parents spent years hauling their kids to likely numerous sports practices and then watching them play. Lots are still hauling them around. Local sports dreamed by government will never match watching you own kids play. I will watch from the couch from now on. (still exhausted years later by the kidos)
Hahahaha, thanks for the laugh Diane. I can’t stand ole smug Rob Fazzini. Glad he got burnt for all of his attitude.
As stated before, one thing BN is not in short supply of is egos. Everyone familiar with this venture knows it was the brainchild of a few people that because they were big baseball fans, automatically thought they knew about sports franchising. I would be willing to bet that little to no due diligence was done on this venture. Someone thought they knew someone, who knew someone else who knew someone else, and just like that it was all going to come together. The BN region does not and never will have the population numbers to make pro sports successful on any level. Outside of major market teams, there is no interest in this product. ISU and IWU don’t even get the attendance numbers for events they used to outside of a couple of events a year. Besides, independent league pro baseball is about as low as you can go. Everyone involved in this from the get go should have realized it. Being a banker, Rob should have known better than anybody it was destined to fail.
Maybe he can MAKE a PROFIT in making jet fuel out of composted garbage and use this against his CAPITAL GAINS!
Thanks for a GREAT Sunday laugh on ole smugbug!
1.) Professsional baseball could have worked here if not for the Peoria Chiefs. They weren’t going to allow B-N to operate where they have territory rights. Fans want to watch future MLB players. A few Frontier League players could have ended up in the Major Leagues; however, it was rare they even got minor league contracts.
2.) Whether you’re investing in the stock of a company, a bond, real estate, or loaning money to fund whatever this LLC was doing, there is risk. Perhaps he didn’t do his due diligence to see if they had at least some assets to offer as collateral. Getting an 8% interest rate shows this was a decent risk for the time the investment was made.