A Family That Plays Hardball

The strain has been on display since the Lerners' $450 million purchase of the team. City officials argued that the family's demand for aboveground parking garages would interfere with plans for a vibrant entertainment district around the ballpark, an anchor for the waterfront makeover. The Lerners countered that underground parking would cost too much and delay the ballpark's scheduled 2008 opening. In the face of the family's resistance, another developer's plan for garages wrapped in condominiums collapsed. Now, the city is trying to win the Lerners' backing for its latest plan, spending $75 million more in public money on a mix of above- and below-ground garages.

City officials have also said the Lerners have not participated in broader discussions about how to improve the area, which has lagged behind development in other parts of the city.

"I'm really disappointed in their involvement. They've been exclusively focused on the stadium. At best they've been indifferent and at worst hostile," said Adrian G. Washington, president and chief executive of the Anacostia Waterfront Corp., a quasi-public agency overseeing redevelopment. "The whole point of the stadium was to anchor a great waterfront neighborhood [and] create opportunities in that area. I really don't feel like they get it."

The Lerners say they are not against waterfront renewal -- they just want it done right. The redevelopment effort, they say, will succeed only after the ballpark opens and only if fans have a hassle-free experience, including easy parking.

"The stadium's success is the key to everything," said Tanenbaum, 49. "We're concerned about the stadium opening and functioning. In time, all those [other] things will fall into place."

The Lerners acknowledge that they find themselves on unfamiliar ground. After guarding their privacy for decades, they are adapting to a role that demands a more public profile. And after working mostly in the suburbs, they have entered the thornier realm of the city, where public financing of the stadium has been controversial, and the government, although better managed than in years past, can still be difficult to navigate.

As Lerner asked one city official, trying to find the decision maker: "Who's your General Eisenhower?"

'A Long-Term Investment'

Some Lerner associates are mystified why the family would plunge into sports team ownership and urban redevelopment, given the challenges ahead and the Lerners' professed lack of interest in local prominence or legacy. To Hazel, it is "uncharacteristic" for a "conservative businessman" such as Lerner to take on a sports team.

To hear Lerner tell it, buying the Nationals was just another business decision.

"There wasn't much difference between this and any other new project we undertake," he said. "We looked at this as a long-term investment. A family investment that would continue on ad infinitum and that my grandchildren would eventually be involved in and their children and so forth."

Based on their prior investments, the Lerners say, Nationals fans should have confidence in the team's future.

Lerner Enterprises owns and manages more than 20 million square feet of office and retail space -- the rough equivalent of 10 Empire State buildings. Lerner has helped build and manage a half-dozen of the region's shopping malls, including both malls at Tysons Corner, as well as White Flint, Wheaton Plaza, Landover and Dulles Town Center. In the District, he and a partner built Washington Square, an office building on one of downtown's most coveted corners, Connecticut Avenue and L Street NW.