April 07, 2005
D.C. land cost challenged
If it sounded awfully convenient to me that D.C. CFO's estimate of land costs for the planned Washington Nationals stadium was just $4 million under the plan's legal limit, apparently I'm not the only one: Several members of the city council are now asking for a do-over of the land valuation, charging that Gandhi severely underestimated the likely cost.
While the assumption has been that the D.C. stadium is a done deal, this could still get interesting - remember, this is now the anti-stadium-majority council in place, the one that the stadium bill was rushed through in order to avoid. Kwame Brown, one of the newly elected councilmembers, was quoted by the Washington Post as asking Gandhi: "If you tell me the cost is $77 million and the true cost becomes $140 million in the end, where are those additional dollars going to come from?" The Post didn't say if Brown got an answer.
