Washington's Major League Divide

Competing Bids for Baseball Team Show Split Between City, Suburbs

Washington area residents share a reverence for the same snaking river, get snarled in the same inching traffic, sweat in the same soggy air and enjoy the same upsides, annoyances and dangers that come with the seat of American power.

It's a region that takes pride in how it cooperates across county and city lines on such crucial issues as homeland security, law enforcement and transportation.

But a dust-up over the right place to host a Major League Baseball team -- the nation's capital city or the country's fastest-growing county, 20 miles west -- is pitting area residents and officials against one another in a way that reopens old city vs. suburb debates.

At play are not only different financing packages, surroundings and business models but also, for some, conflicting worldviews. In the District, many people openly mock the idea of a stadium near Dulles International Airport, which they view as the outer end of one of the most congested traffic corridors in the region. And in Loudoun County, where officials are careful not to directly deride the District, they nonetheless tout the wealth and population of the suburbs.

The local and international competition to be the new home of the Montreal Expos leaves Major League Baseball as the ultimate winner, experts say.

"Baseball's got the upper hand as long as the cities . . . are going to try to outdo each other," said Rick Eckstein, co-author of "Public Dollars, Private Stadiums: The Battle Over Building Sports Stadiums." "They just love it. It's good for them as a business."

Both of the Washington area proposals have their drawbacks and uncertainties. But with baseball officials promising to decide where to move the Expos sometime after Tuesday's All-Star Game, advocates from the District tout its urban setting while Loudoun supporters boast of the growth and advantages of the suburbs.

"It's inconceivable to me that anybody from Washington, D.C., would schlep all the way out there to go to a ballgame," said Tony Bullock, communications director for D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D). "It's a hellish commute any time of day, but especially between 4 and 7 o'clock in the afternoon."

For the 2 million Northern Virginians, the region is just as worthy, the bustling population center of a state with an important patriotic history and long-held major league aspirations.

William L. Collins III, head of the Dulles investment group, breezily cites his side's advantages. "If you're a business looking to relocate any place in the country, your choice would be Northern Virginia," he said. The shopping, good schools and good jobs "make this the best place to live and raise a family in America," he said.

Which bid could win over baseball's Relocation Committee really depends on a jumble of concrete and intangible factors, say people who have studied baseball's previous dances with cities pining for expansion teams. Eager would-be hosts in Virginia and the District have moved into that sometimes-uncertain territory with packages filled with enticements, concessions, promises and a generous allotment of hype, all meant to stir cagey Major League Baseball executives.

Tom Chema, a leader in the development and construction of Jacobs Field, home of the Cleveland Indians, said major league officials are looking for a community that will make money for baseball owners for the long haul.

"What they want is a market that is going to be contributing to the shared revenue pot, not take away from the shared revenue pot," said Chema, chairman of Gateway Consultants Group. "After the blossom is off the rose a little bit, does your . . . team still have the economic staying power?"

Answering that question has been a key task for the backers of the region's rival bids.