November 25, 2005
D.C. stadium battle gone wild!
In anticipation of Monday's showdown in the D.C. city council over the Washington Nationals stadium - the Washington Times is reporting that the council will declare that MLB will either have to chip in more cash, or settle for a scaled-back stadium - pull up a chair, grab a bowl of popcorn, and settle in for the pregame quote smackdown:
"The whole purpose is to find out where we stand today. Should we build it in Southeast. Should we build a cookie-cutter retro structure. Should we renovate RFK? What should we do?" -council finance chair Jack Evans"If you build something that's novel and futuristic, the likelihood is that it's going to cost you more. If cost is an element, sometimes you can't get what you want." -Evans"When we made the estimates, we didn't even know what site we were building on. We had not even a drawing." -mayoral development director Stephen Green"There are no cost overruns ... it's all manageable. We're going to build the stadium for $535 million. It's true; you're never going to know [the true cost], except you then have to value-engineer it to that number." -D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission chair Mark Tuohey"I asked HOK for three designs and they came back with one, because that's the one they wanted to build." -Evans
Ooh, snap! In other finger-pointing news, Green blamed the 38% stadium cost hike on rising steel prices, providing another data point in estimating the Katrina Factor. Oh, and this just in, from tomorrow morning's Washington Post:
A majority of the D.C. Council is demanding a vote on a stadium lease between the city and Major League Baseball, and several council members said they will reject the deal unless baseball agrees to pay for any cost overruns on the project.
Man, oh man. I gotta get me some more popcorn.
Posted by Neil deMause
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