June 13, 2003
D.C. Baseball Update
Let's shout it from the rooftops -- the Montreal Expos aren't coming to Washington, D.C. Not next season, and unless something changes radically in the next few months, probably not ever. After last night, it's clear that the political support to build a new stadium in the District just doesn't exist.
After expressing doubts about Mayor Anthony Williams's plan to publicly finance a new home for the Montreal Expos, the D.C. City Council savaged the plan in a six-hour public hearing last night. Local support for the plan is hard to find, and wasn't helped by the findings of the District's Chief Financial Officer, who claims that the revenue numbers in the Mayor's plan could fall far short of projections:
D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi warned yesterday that the mayor's plan to spend $339 million to lure major league baseball to Washington could face a shortfall of nearly $2 million a year if the team plays poorly.
Gandhi contended that losing teams draw far fewer fans than winning ones, and he called the projected sales tax on tickets "a bit uncertain" because many tickets would be sold on the Internet, where taxation is rare.
"With an average or better record, the District's new team generates sufficient revenue to the support the debt service," he told the D.C. Council's Finance and Revenue Committee. "A losing team, however, does not generate sufficient revenue."
He also estimated that overall revenue could run as low as $13.1 million a year, nearly $2 million less than administration officials say they need to pay off bonds.
Bottom line: there will be no vote by the D.C. City Council on the stadium financing plan before the July 15th Major League All-Star Game -- the date Major League Baseball (MLB) set as the original deadline on the decision of the fate of the Expos. In the meantime, MLB has begun to explore the possibility of having the Expos play even more games in Puerto Rico next season.
If Mayor Williams really wants baseball in D.C., he's going to have to find a better way to sell it to a sceptical City Council -- and he'll need a plan where he'll essentially have to pay off a majority of the Council in order to get his way (something nobody is really factoring into the total cost of the stadium).
Whether or not Williams wants to invest the political capital to get this done, or even if he should, is another question entirely. What I'm curious about is where the two local groups who have expressed an interest in a D.C. baseball team (Fred Malek's group, and another headed by New York real estate developer Mark Broxmeyer), are in this whole process?
In Virginia, a stadium financing plan is already in place, but local opposition to any stadium plan is simply biding its time, wating for the moment that the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority chooses an actual site to build on. And once it does, you'll see the opposition come together in an instant.
In the end, all D.C. baseball fans can really do is steel themselves again for another season of driving up I-95 to see the Orioles.
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Very, very sad.
But at least I have my Yankees, and they always win! ...oh wait.
Posted by:
at June 13, 2003 06:13 PM
Are either of the potential ownership groups considering private financing for the stadium, a la Pac Bell Park?
Posted by:
at June 14, 2003 10:33 AM
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10:20 AM