The D.C. Council's decision to reduce public spending on a new ballpark endangers but does not extinguish the city's hopes of winning a Major League Baseball team, sports economists and officials in other cities said yesterday.
Several other U.S. cities have struck stadium construction deals with teams under similar constraints. And although baseball's president yesterday strongly criticized the council's vote, officials who have been involved in talks with Major League Baseball on other deals said it is unclear whether his statement is part of a negotiating strategy or the beginning of a withdrawal from the D.C. market.
The measure approved by the council on Tuesday essentially caps the public's contribution to the ballpark at 50 percent -- by requiring that at least 50 percent come from the team or other private sources. The council radically changed the agreement that D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) had negotiated with Major League Baseball, which called for less than 18 percent of stadium funding to come from the team -- through rent payments -- and the rest from taxes on big businesses and stadium concessions.
In recent baseball stadium financing agreements in St. Louis, Philadelphia, Detroit and San Francisco, the public subsidy was 50 percent or less, according to figures compiled by the Sports Business Journal.
"It makes it more difficult, but I don't think it makes it impossible," Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economics professor and expert in baseball finances, said of the D.C. Council vote. "Major League Baseball will probably shop around. They'll look at Las Vegas. Maybe they'll look at Portland [Ore.]. But I don't think D.C. is out of the running."
Every stadium deal is different, however, and the District is operating from a position of weakness in some respects, and from a position of strength in others.
Unlike most cities that have recently built ballparks for major league teams, the District is seeking to create a deal sweet enough to entice Major League Baseball to bring a franchise here -- and over the objections of Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos, who doesn't want to share the fan base.
In the last two places where a ballpark was built in order to win a Major League Baseball team -- Colorado and Arizona -- the public contribution was higher than is currently proposed in Washington. Taxpayers in those two areas paid for more than 70 percent, according to the Sports Business Journal.
Similarly, a rival bid from Virginia for a major league team had aimed at having the team chip in about 33 percent.
"We set the public's contribution at about two-thirds," said Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor who approved the sales tax deal that built the Arizona stadium. "If you go lower, you run the risk of not getting a team."
Either way, she noted, there are political risks. Of the three supervisors who supported the sales tax for the ballpark, she was the only one win to reelection, she said.
Later, Wilcox was shot by a man who had objected to the sales tax.
"He'd been listening to talk radio," Wilcox said. "In hindsight, I really think you should go out to the voters."
Neil Macey, who was director of the Colorado Baseball Commission and wrote the legislation that established a stadium taxing district there, said public funding for a ballpark seemed to be the only way to attract a team.
Robert A. Baade, an economics professor at Lake Forest College who has studied stadium economics, said Cropp's plan would be "in the middle of the road" in terms of private participation in stadium financing in recent years.
"Whether 50 percent is an acceptable deal for Major League Baseball is in real question," Baade said. "But it is not necessarily the case that D.C. is without leverage."
That leverage, Baade and Zimbalist said, largely amounts to the city's size and prominence. It is a market that baseball owners would like to tap.
"Look, D.C. is the eighth-largest media market in the country," Zimbalist said. "It's the nation's capital. . . . When you're a great city, the city has more leverage."
Stephen R. McDaniel, an associate professor at the University of Maryland who teaches sports marketing, said bringing the national pastime back to the nation's capital would be a boost for the sport's image at a time of steroid scandals.
On the other hand, Baade said that if baseball officials go back to the table to renegotiate their deal with the District, "it wouldn't set a good precedent for them."
"Major League Baseball has a tough decision to make here," he said.
