October 25, 2006
Gandhi warns of Nats parking penalties
Washington, D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi has come up with a figure for how much in penalties the city would face if it fails to build the Nationals the parking spaces required in their lease, and it's ... well, he's not saying exactly. The Washington Post cites unnamed government officials as saying Gandhi estimated $100 million as a worst-case scenario, but the paper backtracked to say "tens of millions of dollars" in its story on the matter.
Given that the added cost of new parking garages has been estimated at anywhere from $31 million to $75 million, the size of the penalty - and whether it would be cheaper for D.C. to just eat it - is a huge deal. For that matter, given that the city only needs to add 925 parking spaces (see comments) to meet its contractual requirement, perhaps just laying down some asphalt would do to avoid the penalty. Or maybe the Nationals owners, once they see that they're not going to get the thousands of new parking spaces that they want, could be convinced to chip in a few million more from their own massive coffers.
In any case, one thing's for sure: This project is going to be more expensive for the public than the $611 million promised back in March. Gosh, who'da thunk it?
Has ground been broken on the Nats stadium yet?
Posted by Mike on October 25, 2006 11:06 PM
Ground has been broken for a while. Here's a link to the construction cam:
http://www.dcballpark.com/
Posted by Roberto on October 26, 2006 12:09 AM