Williams (D), who was attending a ceremonial reopening of a pedestrian plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, hustled back to the Wilson Building. At a hastily arranged news conference, he called the chairman's move a "setback" because it was slowing down the process of getting a team.
Under Williams's plan, the stadium would be financed through a combination of a gross-receipts tax on big businesses, a tax on concessions and an annual rent payment by the team. Under Cropp's new proposal, the city would implement a gross-receipts tax to raise its $150 million share. But the top rate would be reduced from $48,000 a year to $7,000.
"I have said from the start that I am in favor of baseball. I'm just looking for a better deal. It's premature to say whether anything will come up that is a better deal," Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp said.
(Robert A. Reeder -- The Washington Post)
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Williams said he had hoped the council would approve his plan and then explore private financing options during the next several months. The financing structure could always be altered by the council, he said.
"I don't think the way to do this is to delay the vote," Williams said. "This project is still at risk because of the uncertainty."
Williams said his administration had been approached by other developers with similar plans, all of which were deemed too risky or uncertain.
Like most professional sports leagues, Major League Baseball favors public financing of stadiums because it reduces risk to the owners and the organization and increases the value of the franchise.
Major League Baseball officials, who have agreed to relocate the Montreal Expos to Washington in the spring if the mayor's stadium plan is approved, have given the city until Dec. 31 to complete a deal.
Williams "knows the legislative process better than we do," John McHale Jr., baseball's executive vice president for administration, said yesterday. "So we will refrain from any public comments until we reach the deadline."
In 2002, Gross's former company, Property Funding Group LLC, was hired to put together for the St. Louis Cardinals a deal similar to the one offered Cropp. The Cardinals plan to open a $402 million ballpark in 2006.
Under the terms of that proposal, Property Funding Group was responsible for finding $60 million to $75 million in private investment, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The deal collapsed last year after the Cardinals learned that a principal in Gross's firm had been named in a terrorism investigation. The man, M. Yaqub Mirza, is not involved in BW Realty, Cooke said.
David J. Roodberg, president of Horning Brothers, a D.C.-based developer, said Cropp's plan would be hard to work out in two weeks. "This is an incredibly complex deal," Roodberg said. "I would think it would be incredibly difficult to put this on a fast track. But if all of a sudden you have private people saying they're willing to put up the money, strange things can happen."
Williams expressed outrage that Cropp had held private discussions with the council on a matter of such significance. He said he would pursue strengthening the city's open-meetings laws. "Why you do it in the dark of night is beyond me," Williams said. "This is a classic example of the need for more transparency."
Staff writers Thomas Heath, Dana Hedgpeth and Neil Irwin contributed to this report.
