Off Wing Opinion

I had an interesting lunchtime conversation today with an old friend of mine. For sake of the converation, let's call him Don B. He's a typical D.C.-area resident, a transient from the Southwest who came to the city to pursue a government job at a cabinet agency. These days, he spends his time at a rather anonymous trade association, waiting for an opportunity to leave town when the right job comes along.

It wasn't long after we sat down together today, that he asked me what I thought about the impending arrival of the Expos next season. I told him about my doubts concerning the whole enterprise, and he provided some of his own thoughts he's culled from a career in city planning/urban development.

"The three biggest myths in urban development concern lotteries, casino gambling and stadium construction," he said. "After some hard experiences, we've found that lotteries and casino gambling are actually revenue neutral [the studies I found actually claim a negative impact -- EMc], while publicly-financed stadiums have always wound up to be a drain on the local economy."

Don's fiance is from Pittsburgh, where an effort to build not one, but two new stadiums has turned out to be a disaster. "They went through all that trouble to build those two stadiums (Heinz Field and PNC Park), and it hasn't generated any new revenue at all. In fact, the city has just about been ruined financially," he said.

"But hey, they kept the teams," he sighed as he shook his head.

"I wonder what impact $400 million in tax cuts would have had over 30 years?" I replied.

He smiled, nodded, and continued. "Ever go to Cleveland, and see what the neighborhood looks like around their stadiums? Nobody hangs around there after games, and nobody is going to hang around Anacostia after baseball games either," Don added.

'There's only one reason why these stadium deals get done, and that's to make sure the Mayor gets re-elected. Otherwise, it's a disaster every other way you look at it."

With the official announcement of the Expos move to D.C. out of the way, the hard work of getting the stadium financing package through the D.C. City Council, closing the deal on the appeasment of Orioles owners Peter Angelos and getting RFK Stadium ready to host a baseball game in time for an April 15, 2005 season opener with the Arizona Diamondbacks, all begins.

Not to be a party pooper in the midst of the hoopla, but shouldn't somebody be asking whether or not this is a good idea for the District financially? Click here to read the Post's account of the negotiations -- one that seems to suggest that the District's offer -- described as the most lucrative in all of baseball -- was far higher than it needed to be:

In defense of the deal, negotiators point out that the $440 million stadium financing package crafted by District leaders had to be favorable enough to the Expos to win the approval of Major League Baseball, which exercises monopolistic control over team locations. It also had to trump a rival bid from Northern Virginia and compensate baseball for the financial damage claims that were expected from Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos.

But what District officials apparently did not know was that the Northern Virginia group -- at one point this summer rumored to be the front-runner for the Expos -- had seen its bid begin to unravel Aug. 25, when its organizers told baseball officials that the state was no longer prepared to guarantee all of the bonds for the project. The sudden weakness of the city's main competitor could have given District officials a much better bargaining position.

Hmm. Those "moral obligation" bonds again. So what you have here is a state that is relatively wealthy, with a rapidly growing population and a long history of fiscal probity getting outbid by a city with less wealth, a far smaller population and a recent reputation for fiscal profligacy.

As another observer notes later in the Post story, the District's offer has essentially removed all the risk from this move from the eventual owners of the team. But what the Post story doesn't spell out is that risk is now firmly planted on the shoulders of the District's taxpayers.

Which means you better hope this team hits all of its financial projections, because if it doesn't, the shortfall will have to come out of the pockets of District residents.

WTOP is asking its listeners what they want to name the team. The crowd at DCist has other ideas. Find the rest of their summary of yesterday's events, here.

More later.

UPDATE: Let's go to Sally Jenkins, the only columnist at the Post with the guts to call out this deal for exactly what it is:

Because MLB intimidated the city into building it a free stadium. The blind acceptance of that is amazing. Here's the worst thing about this deal: It creates no incentive for the owners of this team to stay in Washington. They will be getting the short end of the TV stick; they will be paying a premium for the team, and they have no vested interest in the real estate. They'll enjoy big crowds for a season or two but the novelty will wear off, and then what? When the team isn't very good and they don't have enough TV revenue and the crowds stop coming out, what keeps them from pulling up stakes? And going to Charlotte, or Vegas, or San Juan?

So congrats to D.C. on winning back baseball. Just know what you're getting.

Bingo. Meanwhile, Major League Baseball has already set aside some Web real estate for D.C. Baseball.

Jayson Stark, straining to be funny at ESPN.com:

Well, now there may be no reason to recite every event in English and French. But in a cosmopolitan town like Washington, there's no reason to stop using two languages. We suggest a guest language of the day. And someone from the local embassy could stop by and make all p.a. announcements in the language du jour. We hope someone thinks about that. Hasta manana.

Looks like Stark has never been to a D.C. United match.

Better than 31,000 showed up in Montreal last night for the Expos final home game.

With current Expos GM Omar Minaya decamping for New York, there's some speculation that current Yankees GM Brian Cashman, alumni of D.C.'s Catholic University, might be ready to jump ship.

And as always, special thanks to go Bill Yurasko, who has been doing incredible work on compiling every conceivable link on the deal.

Here's one link I thought deserved some special attention -- a story from the Washington Post detailing what went wrong with the Virginia's apparently failed bid for the Expos:

Gov. Mark R. Warner had joined key lawmakers in balking at Virginia's plans for financing a new 42,500-seat stadium. But baseball negotiators, hungry for political certainty, had presented a radical idea: Could Virginia officials simply agree to give the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue expected from the ballpark to baseball or team owners, who would then finance the ballpark themselves?

I know how I would have answered this request: Get lost.

Warner's insistence that Virginia would not allow the stadium to be financed with "moral obligation" bonds (the impasse that led to the above proposal from MLB) was an act of political self-preservation. Remember, this is a governor who pushed through a package of tax increases in a year when the state's economy was rebounding, and the state budget ended the year with a budget surplus.

If Warner had committed the state to a significant financing package, and the state eventually had to make up for a revenue shortfall, Warner would have a dubious political legacy to defend as he seeks higher office -- first in Virginia (don't doubt he'll make another run at the U.S. Senate), and then possibly nationally (don't doubt the appeal of a Southern Democrat on a presidential ticket).

UPDATE: Bill Collins, the former telecom executive who for almost a decade led the charge to bring baseball back to the Washington area, is laying the blame for the loss of the Expos to D.C. at the feet of Governor Warner. The hang-up, those moral obligation bonds:

But the deal derailed when Warner, a longtime baseball supporter who was once an investor in Collins' ownership group, balked at a financing plan that would have pledged the state's "moral obligation" to support the bonds, said Collins.

"It killed any chance we had of dealing with Major League Baseball," Collins said in an interview Wednesday.

When baseball executives learned in a meeting just days ago that Warner was insisting on a different financing mechanism, "that was the day Major League Baseball had the blood drain out of their faces. ... Until then, there had never been any conversation that he wouldn't support it."

I'm not exactly the Governor's biggest fan, owing to the fact that he hiked taxes for Virginians while the budget was roaring back into surplus, but I can't fault him for this call. Warner, before he was a politician, was a businessman (and one of Collins' partners in the Virginia group before he was elected Governor). If he wouldn't committ the moral obligation bonds, there must have been some indication somewhere that there was a chance the state would be left holding the bag.

Welcome to one of those moments when the right decision, and the most politically expedient decision, were one in the same.

There's plenty of links to examine today, just pop over to William Yurasko's place, where he's got all the link you could want from the Post, Times and Baltimore Sun -- inlcuding this piece from Laura Vescey, who thinks the Expos should have been sent packing to Northern New Jersey:

Yankees, Mets, Expos.

Just like the old days of Yankees, Giants, Dodgers.

New York can handle it. New York probably needs it. New York/New Jersey would have been baseball's answer to two questions: where to put the Expos and how to rein in the Yankees.

If you rein in the Yankees, it effectively puts a drag on payrolls for all major league clubs. The Red Sox could take a chill. The Mets would stop thinking they have to imitate every move the Yankees make. The trickle-down effect of competitive balance would result from such a move.

It would help the Orioles compete. It would help everyone compete.

My retort: Rangers, Islanders, Devils. One long-established franchise with superior economic strength, sharing America's largest metropolitan market with two other teams with long-term performance problems.

Heck, the Devils can't sell out Continental Airlines Arena after winning three Stanley Cups in nine seasons. And now you want to try to fill a baseball park 81 days a year? And with a team that is hardly playing at the level of a Triple A franchise? This isn't just wishful thinking, it's a recipe for disaster.

Thanks to Distinguished Senators for the pointer.

If this account is to be believed, a provisional relocation of the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C. is all but a done deal. Then again, another source quoted in the story says that Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, who has opposed the move from the start, will not be placated for at any price.

Bottom line: stay tuned, as we're sure to hear plenty more overnight. If you're so inclined, pop over to the Washington Post in the next 90 minutes, and you'll probably find the story that will front tomorrow morning's paper.

UPDATE: Here's the Post story, complete with another tidbit that will cheer area Soccer fans:

Meanwhile, it was learned yesterday that the D.C. United soccer team is in the advanced stages of negotiations for building a privately funded new stadium near Poplar Point on the east side of the Anacostia River, across the water from the South Capitol Street site where the District wants to build the Expos' new $400 million home.

The 25,000-seat soccer and concert stadium would be surrounded by a training facility, retail establishments and neighborhood recreation fields. "The vision for a stadium is to anchor a mixed-use development," said team president Kevin Payne.

Otherwise, most of the details are the same. For a report from Montreal on the last days of the Expos, click here. More tomorrow morning.