Pawtucket could be on its way to replacing them with another minor league ballclub, building a new downtown soccer stadium and an indoor amusement park or watching a riverboat hotel float down the Seekonk River, if any of the six proposals unveiled Friday ever pan out.

When the Pawtucket Red Sox leave for Worcester in 2021, the city could be on its way to replacing them with another minor league ballclub, building a new downtown soccer stadium and an indoor amusement park or watching a riverboat hotel float down the Seekonk River, if any of the six proposals unveiled Friday ever pan out.

"Understandably, after the PawSox announced their departure, there was a question as to whether there was a future for sports and entertainment in Pawtucket. That has been answered," state Commerce Secretary Stefan Pryor told the Journal Friday after his agency released the results of its solicitation for PawSox recovery plans.

"We are excited that six applications involving sports and entertainment have been submitted," he added. "It appears after very preliminary glance that at least a subset are solid and serious."

Given the economic challenges of minor league sports and real estate development in Pawtucket, the future of mass entertainment in Pawtucket remains highly uncertain, regardless of how promising the bids summarized Friday are.

But what the number and variety of responses to the state's April 2 request for proposals show is at least some level of interest among minor league owners and developers in investing in Pawtucket.

What they don't show the public — because the state did not release the actual responses — is exactly what the bidders have in mind, whether any of the ideas are financially viable and how much each of the applicants would expect taxpayers to kick in to make the ideas work.

Pryor said some of the proposals include financial figures, but declined to elaborate beyond what is in the six summaries released Friday morning.

Two of the proposals come from Rhode Island-based groups: Level Exchange, a Pawtucket recording studio/artist space, and "Minor League Baseball for Pawtucket, a group of local Rhode Island business leaders and community members."

The details released so far on other bidders, such as AJAX Advisors LLC and Native Waters Investment LLC, are scarce.

Two bidders — Frank Boulton and Brett Johnson — have significant profiles in minor league baseball and soccer respectively.

Boulton is CEO and founder of the Long Island Ducks, a team in the independent Atlantic League, which is not affiliated with Major League Baseball. (Another Atlantic League team is the New Britain Bees, which moved into an old stadium in that city when the Double-A affiliate that played there moved into a new publicly financed stadium in Hartford.)

Boulton proposes bringing an Atlantic League team to McCoy Stadium.

Johnson is a private equity investor and founder of Phoenix Rising Football Club, a team playing in the United Soccer League Championship, the second tier of American soccer. Phoenix Rising is seeking a Major League Soccer franchise.

Johnson proposes bringing a United Soccer League franchise "to downtown Pawtucket and envisions construction of a multi-sport stadium and ancillary and sport related development," according to the summary released by the state. "The proposal includes a renewed use for the existing McCoy baseball stadium site. A new recreational park is proposed with six new multipurpose fields that can be used for soccer, lacrosse, or football."

It's one of two soccer-based proposals. AJAX Advisors would "bring professional sports to Pawtucket with independent professional soccer in a new stadium in Downtown Pawtucket and the conversion of McCoy into a light industrial use." It's unclear what "independent professional soccer" refers to or what "light industrial use" would entail.

The two baseball proposals, from Boulton and the group of "local business leaders," are the only ones proposing to use McCoy.

The local baseball group "want[s] to explore ... the possibility of continuing the rich tradition of affiliated, Minor League Baseball in Pawtucket." A team affiliated with MLB, like the PawSox are, would need to strike an agreement with the PawSox owners to play anywhere in Pawtucket.

Finally there are the two non-professional sports proposals.

Level Exchange proposes "the creation of a hub centered around the music industry in Pawtucket, seeing this as an opportunity to foster the growth of the multifaceted creative community. In addition to infrastructure to support the entertainment industry, this approach would include all other aspects needed to sustain such a live-work-play area."

Native Waters proposes building "a Family Entertainment Center and Riverfront Park in Pawtucket.... located on approximately 25 acres of land in the I-95 corridor," and including "an indoor mega coaster, children’s play park, rock climbing wall, overhead zip-line course, bowling alleys, a 7D theater, a variety of restaurants and retail outlets and a riverboat hotel."

Pryor said his agency and Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien's office will set up a committee to review the proposals, which will probably take months, and begin moving forward with one or more applicants in the fall. In the coming weeks the state will review whether any of the proposals would require General Assembly action, he said.

Because many of the proposals target different parcels of land, Pryor said moving forward with multiple bidders at the same time is a possibility.

Victor Matheson, a professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester with an expertise in sports economics, said the responses confirm that there isn't much interest in McCoy beyond baseball, with an independent league team looking like the most likely option due to the problem of potentially having to buy off the PawSox to play affiliated baseball.

On soccer, Matheson said an owner looking to start a minor league team would normally be better off playing in an existing stadium (such as Providence College's recently opened field.)

Another model would be to use the team as a draw for a revenue-generating youth and club sports organization, with the Western Mass Pioneers of the USL League Two a good example.