District officials yesterday began selling their plan to build a waterfront ballpark to business leaders who would end up paying the bulk of the cost, as a panel of Major League Baseball owners prepared for a meeting that could spur the return of the national pastime to the nation's capital.
The stadium, which would be located on the shores of the Anacostia River less than a mile south of the U.S. Capitol, is expected to cost more than $400 million. About $65 million would be set aside to acquire the 20-acre site. The collection of vacant lots, industrial sites, brick rowhouses and clubs is controlled by 27 private owners.
The sales pitch to business leaders, which will continue today, was another sign that negotiations to bring baseball to Washington had entered a new, if still uncertain, stage.
Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos, who is expected to attend today's meeting in Milwaukee, remains adamantly opposed to moving the Montreal Expos to Washington, a baseball official said yesterday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said informal discussions about compensation for Angelos have gone nowhere.
In Washington, City Administrator Robert C. Bobb said the District will try to negotiate with owners of the land on which the stadium would be constructed but would use eminent domain if necessary. "Certainly, we will work with them, and hopefully, at the end of the day, we can make a deal," he said.
Six of the D.C. Council's 13 members said in interviews or through spokesmen that they would support the financing package, which requires council approval. A seventh council member, Kevin P. Chavous, did not respond to messages but has said in the past that he would support such a proposal.
That margin would shift dramatically Jan. 1, when Chavous and two other stadium supporters will be replaced. The three likely newcomers, including former mayor Marion Barry, oppose using public tax dollars to build a ballpark.
With that deadline looming, administration officials "made pretty clear" during a meeting with council members Tuesday "that they want this wrapped up by December 30," said Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), one of three council members who said they have yet to decide whether to support the stadium proposal.
A majority of the council and many residents of the community near the proposed stadium site were generally supportive of the city's decision to locate a ballpark on one of the city's bleakest landscapes. During the day, the area is populated by laborers at auto repair shops, a Metrobus parking lot, a trash recycling facility and an asphalt plant.
"It's a blight over there," said Mary C. Williams, an advisory neighborhood commissioner who lives across South Capitol Street from the site. "This may be an opportunity for economic development in that area."
But on the council and in the community, there seems to be significantly less support for using tax dollars to pay for a stadium.
The stadium project would be financed with 30-year bonds, which would cost as much as $43.5 million a year to service. The city proposes to generate that sum in part by collecting rent from the team's owners and imposing a sales tax on in-stadium concessions, tickets and other merchandise. But more than half the money would come from a gross receipts tax on the nearly 2,000 District businesses that each take in more than $3 million a year.
Graham said he would need to see a detailed analysis of the economic benefits baseball has to offer before he could vote for the business tax.
"Is [baseball] an economic engine or isn't it?" he said. "If it is, it can benefit schools, a public hospital, affordable housing. But if this is just something that's going to be neat psychologically, I don't want to buy it."
