December 07, 2004

Spanning the globe

Slow news days of late, unless you count baseball players shooting up with fertility drugs or getting caught pulling a Hugh Grant. A few items that piled up in the interim:

• Remember that new stadium cost estimate that D.C. council chair Linda Cropp called for last week? D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi now says it could take five months to complete. Since a measure approved by the council last week requires the city to find a cheaper stadium site if the total bill is more than $630 million, this means land acquisition couldn't even begin before then - which could make for a tight timeline to finish the stadium by the April 2008 date demanded by MLB. And as everyone should know by now, tight deadlines lead to rush charges, which are a prime cause of cost overruns.
• The D.C. stadium bill still needs to clear a second council vote next Tuesday, of course, and at least one dissident councilmember is hopeful that that won't happen. "I think at least two of those abstentions [out of three in the original 6-4-3 vote] are no votes, and that's a split, and the deal fails, and then we negotiate a real deal while Major League Baseball plays at RFK for at least three years," Adrian Fenty told a local TV station. That would require Linda Cropp, the third abstainee, to abstain again next week, which seems unlikely given that she's promised her support for the deal; though Bud Selig's refusal to negotiate the terms of the deal could yet cause her to change her mind. Again.
• The Newark Star-Ledger, of all places, has run a long profile of the impact of new sports facilities in Cleveland, recent winner of the Census Bureau's designation as poorest city in America. Writes reporter George Jordan:

  Today, the main streets in and around the Gateway are marked by empty office towers, vacant department stores and storefronts with "For Lease" signs. After spending $700 million to build the nation's most extensive sports infrastructure, this city finds itself in a familiar place: trying to fix a downtown abandoned by businesses and the middle class, with neighborhoods gripped by despair.

  The latest idea by Cleveland's civic leaders to spark a "renaissance": Casino gambling. For more on what the morning-after looks like for stadium deals, Jordan's piece is well worth reading, if you like tragedies.

There are rumors that a Brooklyn Nets arena Memorandum of Understanding could be on its way, perhaps as soon as this week. Until then, I'll be enjoying the respite.

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