December 31, 2005

Meet the new year, same as the old year

Eight years after the Hartford Whalers hightailed it out of town for a new arena in North Carolina, the Associated Press reports that a Connecticut developer wants to tear down the Hartford Civic Center and replace it with a new $250 million building that would be used to lure a new NHL franchise:

"We've got our own money, we're willing to invest in an arena and we're willing to buy a team," [developer Lawrence Gottesdiener] said. "It would be an important entity and symbol of the city, the region and the state."

In the next paragraph, the AP explained what Gottesdiener meant by "our own money":

Gottesdiener's plan calls for a publicly subsidized, 16,000-seat venue that would be home to a major hockey team.

Ah, it's going to be a great 2006. Happy new year, everybody!

December 29, 2005

D.C. lease deal nowhere near

D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams won't submit a Washington Nationals lease to the city council until mid-January at the earliest, says city administrator Robert C. "Bob" Bobb. "We're doing a lot of analysis. We're putting together a lot of alternative options that we can present," Bobb told the Associated Press, adding helpfully: "There are a number of options and alternatives on the table." It's still possible that MLB will file for arbitration of the lease terms, though the league also might sit tight and wait to see what Williams can do to buy two more votes, given that arbitration is unlikely to get them what they want.

December 28, 2005

D.C. mulls land sale to raise stadium cash

Members of the D.C. council have told the Washington Post that city officials considering selling development rights on land near the planned Washington Nationals stadium to pay for the project's cost overruns. The Post descibed this as an attempt to "assure council members that the city will not get stuck paying for infrastructure and other costs that are not in the budget" - but, of course, the city would still be stuck paying for them, just by selling city assets instead of dipping directly into the general fund.

One of the two key council swing votes, at least, Kwame Brown, said he wouldn't favor such a deal. "What [Anacostia Waterfront Corp. chair Stephen Goldsmith is] doing is trying to make council members feel comfortable," Brown told the Post. "I hope to talk with him about it. I hope it's not like other plans where they just force it down our throats."

December 27, 2005

Twins plan to expire with 2005

The Minnesota Twins' stadium deal with Hennepin County expires midnight on Saturday, and it looks likely to meet a quiet death: While Gov. Tim Pawlenty's office is talking about extending stadium talks into 2006, Twins exec Jerry Bell stuck a fork in them, saying, "This deal is gone. It can't happen anymore." Interestingly, Bell cited rising cost projections as a key reason the plan is no longer viable. Hmm - where have we heard that before?

Powell: Please lease me, oh yeah

Today's AP headline on the Washington Nationals lease standoff: "Powell Urges D.C. Council to Approve Stadium Lease." And why does Colin Powell care, you ask? Because he's trying to buy a part of the team, of course, and so would benefit directly from a generous lease deal. Coming next week: "Powell Urges Landlord to Approve Apartment Lease" and "Powell Urges Walgreens Cashier To Approve Credit Card Purchase."

December 23, 2005

The season of giving

The transit strike is finally over, and I have presents to buy, so today's news will be a bullet-point special:

• The Oakland A's have announced they're going ahead with plans to cut capacity at the Oakland Coliseum from 44,073 to 34,179, by closing the stadium's upper deck and covering it with a tarp. (The tarp will, according to A's spokesman Jim Young, be decorated to "reflect the team's rich history and take advantage of marketing opportunities." Now there's something to look forward to.) The unbiased MLB.com headline on the plan to make fewer seats available to fans: "A's to offer more fan-friendly stadium."
• Reputed "swing" vote on the D.C. council Carol Schwartz has posted her thoughts on the Washington Nationals lease deal, and it's clear from her conclusion which way she's swinging: "If a 'no' vote from me means baseball walks - and I hope that it won’t, but it might - I know I will be among those who will be blamed. But I would rather be blamed now for being responsible than be blamed later for being irresponsible." Meanwhile, a Washington Examiner columnist predicts that private developers will ride to the rescue.
• Jackson County voters will get to decide on April 4 whether to hike sales taxes by 0.375% to fund about $425 million worth of renovations to the Chiefs' and Royals' stadiums. (The teams would kick in $100 million combined, and would cover any cost overruns.) If the sales-tax plan goes down to defeat, the county legislature will likely come back with another referendum later next year on spending between $60 million and $100 million on lesser renovations required by the two teams' leases.

And with that, I'm done for the weekend. Chappy Cholidays!

December 21, 2005

Wait till next year

The D.C. mayor's office has officially announced that the Washington Nationals lease vote has been put off at least until January 3. But though that means blowing the end-of-year deadline agreed to with MLB, D.C. sports chief Mark Tuohey didn't seem concerned, or at least put up a good front, telling the Washington Times: "The fact that we are going to be a few weeks late on this is, in my judgment, not going to be an issue. ... We are going to be working with baseball over the next few weeks to prepare the document that will go before the council."

MLB officials have threatened to take D.C. to binding arbitration after the first of the year, but the Times also provides some reasons why that might not be such a great option:

Several persons with knowledge of the lease situation said an arbitrator could rule that the city must pay for all of MLB's costs associated with the stadium deal in the past year. However, an arbitrator also could rule that the baseball stadium agreement signed last year is invalid without the lease in place and free both the league and city from any obligations. It is seen as unlikely that the arbitrator would force the city to build the stadium.

In other deadline-extension news, Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wilf and Anoka County have agreed to extend their deal to build a $675 million football stadium, while waiting to see if the state will come up with a share of the funds. Yet another reason never to take stadium "deadlines" seriously - though if you needed yet another reason, you really haven't been paying attention.

December 20, 2005

D.C. stadium bond sale called off

And still more on the Washington Nationals stadium lease stalemate:

• D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi's tells Bond Buyer that "there will be no [stadium] bond sale this year." That would open the way for MLB to declare D.C. in default of the stadium deal, and seek binding arbitration - though it's still very much an open question whether it would be binding on the city council, which isn't a signatory to the Baseball Agreement.
• Some D.C. councilmembers, according to the AP, are pushing for an agreement that the Nats' new owner pay for cost overruns, as is the case in many other cities, before they'll approve the lease deal. Note one of the few exceptions, of course: Bud Selig's Milwaukee Brewers. Prepare the fleecing shears!

D.C. mayor threatens self

More fallout from the collapse of the Washington Nationals lease talks, from this morning's Washington Post:

Another MLB official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the subject is so sensitive, said the league's formal response to a failure by the city to endorse the lease likely would be to announce that baseball was forced to "explore any and all options" for the Nationals' future. The implication: Baseball might seek to move the Nationals, or even revive the concept of contraction, eliminating the franchise as part of a new collective bargaining agreement with the players' union.

"The fact is, there are a number of cities that had even more generous deals on the table than we did," [Mayor Anthony] Williams said yesterday during a radio interview on WTOP-AM. [Ed. note: Say whaaaaaat?] "[MLB] could potentially try to leave, and we could be out money for damages."

Well, yes, they could try to leave - or, more to the point, threaten to leave, aided and abetted by a mayor who's willing to wave that threat stick for them. But as the Post's Dave Sheinin and Barry Svrluga write, MLB would be foolish to walk away from D.C.:

"Anyone who brings up contraction [in this negotiation] is just posturing," [one unnamed baseball] official said. "They're not going to contract. We're not talking about the Expos anymore - losing $40 million a year in Montreal. We're talking about a team worth $450 million, that made $10 million last year."

And there's the key to this whole game of chicken: While Bob DuPuy issues edicts about the future of Washington baseball being "at a crossroads," the fact of the matter is that MLB needs D.C. right now far more than D.C. needs baseball. It's a great opportunity for the city to do some hardball negotiating of its own - though with the mayor insisting that baseball holds all the cards, any hard bargaining is going to be up to the council. The Washington Times' Tim Lemke reports that "the vote could be rescheduled for Thursday, but it might not take place until after Jan. 1." This might be a good time to invest in D.C. council switchboard stock.

December 19, 2005

D.C. mayor: Ho-o-o-o-old everything!

On the eve of a scheduled showdown on the Washington Nationals stadium lease, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams has pulled the issue from consideration while he makes "small technical changes" to the language. Presumably Williams wouldn't have delayed the vote if he thought he could win it, so the guess is that he doesn't have the seven votes needed for passage; D.C. TV news stations are reportedly saying that the mayor is two votes short, but that Carol Schwartz and Kwame Brown are willing to defect to the "yes" side if the federal government promises to pay the $20 million cost of expanding the Navy Yard Metro stop. With the holiday break fast approaching, the odds are looking slim that the council will pass the lease before MLB's December 31 deadline, though of course deadlines are made to be extended.

LATE NOTE: MLB president Bob DuPuy has responded, bringing out the big threat stick: "We used our best efforts to reach closure with the Council to ensure the future of the Washington Nationals in the District of Columbia. If the Council fails to approve the lease, we would be at a crossroads. ... The Baseball Stadium Agreement (BSA) requires lease approval by the end of this month. Despite today's announcement that you will postpone the vote, we urge the council to approve the lease prior to this deadline. If the lease is not approved by then, the city will be in default on its contractual commitments and we will then have no choice but to prepare for arbitration. ... In arbitration, all prior concessions by MLB would be revisited." In other words: We ain't budging an inch. Is this the week for that or what?

December 16, 2005

Laying odds in D.C.

D.C. stadium opponents lobbied the city council today to reject the Nationals lease offer in Tuesday's upcoming vote, reporting on Indymedia that councilmembers Marion Barry and Carol Schwartz look like solid "no" votes. That leaves Phil Mendelson - who "sounds like he is a No on the deal but would not go on record as being so," according to the Indymedia report - and Kwame Brown as the two swing votes, both of whom would be needed to pass the stadium deal. As for Brown, activist Eric Gold writes:

That brings us back to the enigma of Kwame Brown. Elected on the campaign platform of schools not stadiums and no public funding for baseball... he spoke with the lobby team in terms of facts or lack thereof. He tried to convince us that he does not have all the facts to make a decision at this point. ... Kwame pressed us on whether opponents of the deal were willing to pay out "say 40 million dollars" to walk away from Major League Baseball. As explained to him, walking away would cost the City 19 million dollars per the legislation passed last December. Compared to the 700+ millions of dollars we would save, this payout seems like a bargain. He was right, he didn't have all the facts.

Meanwhile, Washington Times columnist Adrienne Washington writes that D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams told the papers editors this week that paying for a stadium is like buying an expensive painting for more than it's worth, even though "it's not the best circumstances" and "everybody comes out of negotiations unsatisfied." Replies Washington: "I don't know about the Williams family, but in the Terrell family, Grandma Bea would have spoken up before the deal was struck and said, 'Sorry, we can't afford a pretty painting when we have children to feed and educate first.'"

Pittsburgh mulls Penguins subsidy

San Jose isn't the only city succumbing to relocation blackmail: Allegheny County chief executive Dan Onorato declared this week that as Pittsburgh is reaching "crisis time as it relates to the Penguins," he'd consider spending $90 million in state capital funds on a new arena project. (Other local electeds seemed less sure about the subsidy, but said they'd consider it.) This after Pens owner/player/legend Mario Lemieux said last weekend there was only a "slim chance" the team would stay in Pittsburgh. Be right back - I've gotta go make a call to my landlord...

Another one bites the dust

Did NBA arenas of the late 1980s suffer from planned obsolescence or what? The Miami Arena set the modern record for shortest shelf life for a major sports facility, succumbing to replacement in 1998 at the ripe old age of 10; the Charlotte Coliseum barely lasted much longer. And now chair of Milwaukee's Bradley Center, Ulice Payne, Jr., says the city needs to replace that 17-year-old arena or risk losing the Bucks: "There's not much more juice left in this orange." Payne insists a new arena can be built, as the Bradley Center was, through private donations; others are skeptical, Wisconsin Center District board chair Franklyn Gimbel noting: "There doesn't seem to be a collection of folks to write giant checks to augment the needs of developing a new arena."

SJ offered replacement Quakes

The San Jose Earthquakes are no more, team owners have announced: The two-time MLS champions are moving to Houston after the San Jose city council tabled plans for building a new soccer-only stadium with public funds.

Almost immediately, though, MLS commissioner Don Garber said that San Jose could be granted a new team in 2007 - for a price. "We know there's great history there, we know fans come out when the team is doing well," Garber told reporters. "We need to take a deep breath, rally behind the scenes and find a local owner with a stadium plan." San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales promptly offered $80 million in stadium construction, land, and operating subsidies for an expansion franchise. Now that's service!

Get-into-meeting-free union cards?

More reports trickling in from Monday night's New York Yankees stadium hearing:

• At least three people who were stuck outside the hearing tell me they heard guards ask for "elected officials or union members" to come to the front so they could be let in - even while members of the general public were being told the room was at full capacity under the fire code. Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion's press secretary, Anne Fenton, insists this is untrue: "No one was instructed to let any specific person or group of people into the meeting, nor were they instructed to prohibit entrance to any individuals."
• Another audience member recounts that, as she tried to pass information to those stuck outside, Benny Catala, Carrion's director of constituent services, told her that if she didn't go back inside he'd have her arrested. Asked what law allowed him to do this, he snapped: "Benny's law."
• As for Randy Levine's allegation that opponents of the stadium plan are all "professional protestors," Save Our Parks organizer Joyce Hagi, who lives a few blocks from the stadium on the Grand Concourse, replies: "We will submit, at any time, to a residence check if he'd like. As for professional protesters, he should know since they brought so many of them Monday evening."

December 15, 2005

The carrot and the stick

With five days to go before a city council showdown on the Washington Nationals lease, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams is promising goodies for those who back his plan, and lumps of coal for those who oppose it. "I will do everything in my power," Williams told reporters yesterday. "I know the people who will support this, and I'll work tirelessly and mightily to support them. The people who do not support it, I won't forget." Williams said he believes he has five solid votes for the stadium deal - presumably Ambrose, Cropp, Evans, Orange, and Patterson - meaning he'd need to pick up two votes from among Brown, Gray, Mendelson, and Schwartz to secure passage of the lease.

For more on this, see the DCist's excellent rundown of the major players in the Washington stadium mess and where they screwed up.

LATE NOTE: You can also hear me discussing the Nats stadium issue with WAMU-FM's Kojo Nnamdi yesterday afternoon, archived here in both Real and Windows Media formats.

December 14, 2005

MLB to D.C.: Our way or the highway

A full day of D.C. council hearings on the Washington Nationals stadium controversy, and the guy who gets all the headlines didn't even show up. MLB president Bob DuPuy sent a letter to council chair Linda Cropp yesterday, saying that contrary to prior reports, baseball is not okay with building at the site of RFK Stadium instead of on the Anacostia waterfront:

"We continue to be convinced that the site called for ... is the best of the available options. We are not prepared to summarily agree that the site ought to be moved and wish to dispel any suggestions that you may have heard to the contrary. ... The deadlines negotiated in the Baseball Stadium Agreement are important to the long-term success of this franchise. It does not appear to us that those deadlines could possibly be met if the district were now to propose that the site be changed."

Of course, opposition to changing the site and $1.35 will get DuPuy a Metro ride from RFK to the Navy Yard (off-peak only). While DuPuy has hinted at filing a lawsuit or seeking binding arbitration should the current stadium deal be rejected by the council, it's unclear what legal standing he would have - the Baseball Stadium Agreement, after all, already spells out the penalties for missing the Opening Day 2008 target date: $19 million in rent breaks to the Nationals, which is looking more and more like chump change compared to the estimated $61 million price gap between the two sites.

As for the hearing itself, much of the time was spent figuring out how exactly the city plans to pay the now $667 million stadium cost without going over its $535 million borrowing limit. Under questioning from Cropp, D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi laid out the following scheme:

• $535 million in bonds
• $54 million in finance charges, already carved out as a separate line item by the infamous "technical amendments"
• $30 million in interest earned on the bonds before the money is spent
• $9 million in a "premium" for investment-grade bonds
• $20 million from MLB
• $37.5 million in tax revenues already raised during the Nationals' first season
• $36.5 million in Metro upgrades, according to Mayor Anthony Williams, to be paid for by, um, somebody else

(Yes, I'm aware that adds up to more than $667 million. There's still some funny math going on here.)

Of course, it's hard to argue that some of these items, like the $37.5 million in tax revenues already sitting in D.C.'s bank account, aren't "general funds," but D.C. officials argued this anyway. D.C. sports authority chair Mark Tuohey also insisted that giving the Nationals one-third of non-game-day parking revenues was not a quid pro quo for the $20 million in MLB funds, but councilmembers didn't seem to believe him.

The council is scheduled to vote next Tuesday, and as of now, it looks like seven of the 13 members (Barry, Brown, Catania, Fenty, Graham, Gray, and Schwartz) are still solidly opposed to the stadium lease. If they vote it down, no one knows what happens next - though another MLB hissy fit seems guaranteed.

December 13, 2005

D.C. CFO: RFK site cheaper

Throw a couple more cost estimates on the fire! D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi has issued his latest price tag for the Washington Nationals stadium, and there's good news and bad news: It's not the $714 million that was reported last week, but it is $667 million, well over D.C.'s $589 million budget, and 51% higher than the $440 million that was originally proposed 15 months ago. Gandhi further reported that a new facility on the site of the current RFK Stadium would cost just $606 million, even after adding in $31 million in contingency funds.

It's all likely to be a topic of heated debate at today's D.C. council hearing on the Nats lease, which is now underway and streaming online. Already this morning, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams has called the ballpark plan a "multi-trillion-zillion-dollar development." Guess that's one way of avoiding charges you're lowballing costs.

Adolfo the Beep has a posse

In the latest installment of democracy Bronx-style, about 200 people who showed up at the alloted 6 pm start time for last night's Yankees stadium hearing found the doors barred, with staffers for Borough President Adolfo Carrion claiming the room was filled to capacity. Inside, though, there were still a couple of dozen empty seats - along with more than a hundred members of construction unions, who'd been bused in early to grab the available seating. Guess that's one way to avoid being outnumbered 35 to 1.

As chants of "Let us in!" filtered in through two sets of closed glass doors, a parade of iron workers talked up the jobs that would be created in building the planned $800 million stadium. The few opponents to speak, meanwhile, addressed the usual community complaints - loss of public parkland, the addition of parking and loss of trees in the nation's worst asthma neighborhood, and the question of what the Red Sox know that the Yankees don't - but largely focused on the not-so-public process:

• "We stacked this room with all people out of the area - our people are sitting outside in the cold, and nobody's letting them in," said Pasquale Canali, president of the 161st Street Merchants Association, to applause. "And this is what happened to this process from the beginning. The community was never involved, and that's why we have all these problems. We love the Yankees, but we don't want to take parkland for the benefit of a private corporation. A couple of weeks ago, after we voted down at the community board, I read in the newspaper that our vote didn't mean nothing. What are we doing on the community board if our vote don't mean nothing?"
• "What just happened here today is a travesty," said Majora Carter of Sustainable South Bronx. "There is not a single person here who is not interested in jobs. Believe me, we want them for our community. What we expect from you, and what we thought you were going to get, is someone who is going to take into consideration all of the planned projects that are happening here and that would not leave the community in the dirt."

Back in the vestibule, meanwhile, Carrion's director of constituent services, Benny Catala, was berating those demanding to be let in: "Anyone that causes a disturbance inside will be removed! The minute it becomes disorderly we will shut it down!"

None of this appears to be illegal - the ULURP land use process rules allow borough presidents to hold public hearings in a back room at Dominick's if they want, though state open-meeting laws may beg to differ - it certainly didn't win the soon-to-be-mayoral candidate Carrion any friends in his home borough. Okay, well, maybe one guy with an office there.

By the end of the evening, many of those outside, especially those with kids in tow, had given up and gone home; the rest had trickled into the hearing room as others left. Many made it in just in time to hear the meeting be called to a close promptly at 8 pm - leaving at least 20 to 30 people who'd signed up but hadn't yet spoken, including some who'd signed up before the unions had even arrived. Deputy borough president Earl Brown acknowledged that they had taken speakers out of order. The reason? "We tried to make sure that we had people who spoke for and spoke against."

Oh, and the borough president's mystery five acres? They were never mentioned. Must be one of those things man was not meant to know.

LATE NOTE: Yankees president (and former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani) Randy Levine told the New York Post's Bill Sanderson after the hearing: "As the process goes forward, it will become more and more clear that the people who speak in opposition are professional protesters." Does that mean they can get health benefits?

December 12, 2005

Jersey NFL stadium tops $1B mark

The New York Giants and Jets issued preliminary plans for their planned shared stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands, but the headlines aren't about the snazzy artist's renderings (are those watercolors?), but rather the new cost projection: more than $1 billion, according to Jets president Jay Cross. That's up from $800 million just since September, and is another indicator that the Katrina Effect is real and substantial. As for whether it throws a wrench into the Jets' and Giants' plans, that's for their bankers to determine, as the two teams are currently set to be on the hook for all construction costs.

MN stadium honcho: Voting "not helpful"

As the 2006 Minnesota legislative session nears, several Anoka County city councils have passed non-binding resolutions calling upon the county to hold a countywide referendum before hiking sales taxes to pay for a new Vikings stadium. "We see no benefit in it from our standpoint," Oak Grove council member Jim Iund told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. "If they raise the sales tax three-quarters of a percent and put it into the roads in Anoka County, I'd be the first one to vote for it." County stadium czar Steve Novak retorted that the call for a public vote is "an organized diversionary tactic that is not necessarily helpful and useful to the overall debate."

D.C. talking soccer stadium, San Jose not

Officials of D.C. United are hitting the streets to sell their plan for a $1.5 billion soccer-stadium-and-development plan, bringing players into the Anacostia neighborhood to hand out signed soccer balls and promising jobs to local residents and all the usual. The Washington Post continues to report that "the team's owners plan to use their own money," but as per policy here, I'm waiting to hear an actual financing plan before making a determination. After all, we've heard this sort of thing before.

In other soccer news, the plan for a publicly funded stadium for the San Jose Earthquakes that the San Jose city council planned to put on its agenda is now off the agenda again, at least for the moment. If you're scoring at home, we're three days away from the Dec. 15 deadline that MLS commissioner Don Garber set to decide the Quakes' 2006 home.

Bronx Boro Prez: Mine's bigger

It's Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion's turn to hold a public hearing on the New York Yankees stadium project - the one he held last month where he was jeered by local residents was technically a "town meeting," not a public hearing - and the Beep says he plans to unveil new plans for increasing public parkland. Carrion "remains committed to preserving the 'spirit and character' of the [existing] stadium, as well as seeking a sports-themed high school [and] a hotel-conference center," a Carrion spokesperson told the Daily News. "This will provide an increase of 5 acres of parkland to what has already been proposed." What's "already been proposed" would knock down Yankee Stadium and replace it entirely with public ballfields, so it's going to be interesting to see where Carrion finds another 5 acres of space, especially while also proposed his (as yet unfunded) school and hotel on the property. Show up at the Bronx County Courthouse, 161st Street and Grand Concourse, at 6 pm tonight to see the show.

December 11, 2005

D.C. official: We lowballed stadium costs

As part of a long piece in today's Washington Post analyzing the now-$714 million Washington Nationals deal, there's this juicy tidbit:

Green's budget, however, did not include money for upgrades to a nearby Metro station and roads or other infrastructure costs because a stadium site had not been selected, said a source who helped prepare the budget. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the project is at a sensitive stage, said officials also added relatively small contingency costs because they knew it would be hard to persuade the council to approve a larger budget.

If you want an explanation for why stadiums invariably generate huge cost overruns from initial proposal to final cost, there's your answer. It's long been speculated that stadium boosters lowball cost estimates in order to make stadiums sound cheaper, but to my knowledge this is the first time that a city official - even an anonymous one - has admitted to it in print.

December 09, 2005

The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!

The D.C. mayor's office produced the long-awaited Washington Nationals stadium lease today, just in the nick of time: As the Washington Times reports, if the lease hadn't made it into the city council's hands by today's noon deadline for publication in the D.C. Register, the stadium process would have turned into a pumpkin. The 108-page document (PDF file here) and 22 pages of attachments (here) are available for online perusal courtesy of councilmember David Catania - I'll be digging into them this weekend, and will report back here if anything interesting turns up.

LATE NOTE: HTML versions now available here and here, courtesy of DC Watch. A public hearing on the lease is tentatively set for this Tuesday at 10 am.

December 08, 2005

2,102,400-minute warning

The owners of the Seattle Sonics warn that even though the team's lease at KeyArena doesn't expire until 2010, that doesn't mean they plan to be patient about their demands for a new round of arena subsidies. "Everybody thinks in terms of 2010 as being a long way out and we can deal with that problem later," team VP Terry McLaughlin told reporters yesterday. "We can't deal with that problem later. We need some decision immediately." The Seattle Times added: "[Sonics CEO Wally] Walker and McLaughlin yesterday repeatedly stressed that the Sonics owners will honor the lease and are not threatening to leave." Say what?

Chargers to be forced to pay for land?

This came up last week, but I missed it in all the D.C. excitement: The San Diego Chargers' plan to build a stadium in exchange for 60 acres of free land could be tripped up by local law. Turns out the land is officially owned by the San Diego water department, and by law the city is required to get its appraised value in return if it's rezoned and sold for another use. Chargers lawyer Mark Fabiani insists that "there are ways to deal with the issue that are legally appropriate and publicly acceptable" - but simultaneously said he didn't want to discuss them in public for fear of alienating potential development partners, so no telling what those would be.

If it's Tuesday, it must be San Antonio

Florida Marlins president David Samson began his stadium-grubbing tour of the U.S. on Tuesday, visiting San Antonio to talk with elected officials there about the possibility of their city as a relocation site. (One wonders if Judge Nelson Wolff is still peddling his "We'll get you a stadium, just give give us ten years" line.) While there, Samson also revealed to reporters that the Marlins owners would consider Portland, Las Vegas, and Norfolk, but not Monterrey; and tried to argue that putting the Fish in San Antonio would actually help other Texas franchises: "Right now the Marlins franchise receives way too much revenue sharing, and that comes from other owners like the owners of the Rangers and the Astros who are putting money into the pot, so they are trying to find a way to get the Marlins in a different financial position." So the Texas teams should give the Marlins a cut of revenue now to avoid being among 29 teams to give them a cut of revenue later ... you think Samson has considered a second career?

December 07, 2005

D.C. council minority holds off stadium cap

The D.C. council voted 8-5 yesterday to establish a firm $535 million cap on city spending for a Washington Nationals baseball stadium ... and the measure failed. As "emergency declarations" that bypassed normal council channels, the twin bills proposed by councilmember David Catania needed nine votes, a two-thirds supermajority, to become law.

Amid reports that the total stadium tab could now be as high as $714 million, several legislators angrily complained that they had been, in councilmember Jim Graham's words, "hoodwinked" into approving a deal that allowed for only $535 million in bonds, but contained additional off-budget expenses for land and infrastructure. After lead baseball backer Jack Evans asserted, "If you vote in favor of this, you would stop the stadium project in its tracks," councilmember Kwame Brown retorted that there needs to be a figure above which D.C. will not spend: "Some will say that's stopping a stadium. I don't think so."

The true test for the Nats stadium plan will come on December 20, when the council is expected to vote on the team's lease with the city, which has yet to be publicly released. Of yesterday's eight-vote majority, seven have been vocal in their opposition to the plan: Brown, Catania, Graham, Adrian Fenty, Vincent Gray, Carol Schwartz, and Marion Barry. To get the lease approved, then, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams would have to flip one vote onto the pro-stadium side - the Washington Times yesterday speculated that either Brown or Schwartz could switch sides, though both were among the most adamant yesterday that rising stadium costs must be reigned in.

December 06, 2005

D.C.: Pay no attention to that $700m behind the curtain

It's tomorrow - well, today - you know what I mean - and as expected, details are starting to trickle in as to the new price tag for the planned Washington Nationals stadium. Without further ado:

• The Washington Post cites "a source with knowledge of the discussions" as saying cost estimates have now reached $714 million, including land and infrastructure. D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi, who is preparing the new cost study, would say only that "I can understand that because of Hurricane Katrina, costs have changed," and "we hope that pretty soon we'll have the numbers."
• The new figures include $41 million for underground parking, $20 million in Metro upgrades and $12 million in road improvements. (City officials continue to maintain that these costs will be paid for by someone else.) They also include $40 million in "contingencies," double Gandhi's original figure.
• D.C. mayoral spokesperson Vince Morris retorted that the new numbers a "doomsday budget" that "does not reflect reality," telling the Washington Times: "They threw everything but the kitchen sink into the cost."

We also learn more today as to the "concessions" MLB will be getting from D.C. in exchange for its $20 million in cash - though what you learn depends on what paper you read. The Post:

In return, the city has agreed to give baseball one-third of parking revenue generated by a new stadium on non-game days, city officials said yesterday.

Over the course of the stadium's life, expected to be 30 to 40 years, baseball would get back its $20 million, according to sources familiar with the lease negotiations.