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D.C. mayor urges council to pass stadium proposal
Williams lobbies for waterfront site; alternate plan might be put to vote, too
By Jeff Barker
Sun Staff
Originally published November 9, 2004

WASHINGTON - Mayor Anthony A. Williams' plan to finance a baseball stadium headed for a tantalizingly close vote in D.C. Council today, as the mayor warned opponents that baseball won't deliver a team if the city scraps or tinkers with the original stadium proposal.

Williams said yesterday that he had secured the required seven votes for passage, but council opponents, who have complained about the stadium's cost, characterized his majority on the 13-member body as shaky. Williams said in the afternoon that, "We're trying to tighten them up and reinforce them [the votes]."

Later, the mayor appealed to the public in a rare televised address to approve the bill for a publicly funded stadium on the Anacostia River waterfront.

"For the sake of new jobs, homes, businesses - and a new river - I'm urging the council to pass it," Williams said in a taped speech broadcast last night on radio and a District cable station. "History is written in moments. In the story of our city, tomorrow is one of them."

The city has waited 33 years for a new team. On Sept. 29, city leaders announced they had reached an agreement with Major League Baseball to move the Montreal Expos here by spring.

Among those joining Williams at a raucous downtown celebration that afternoon was council chairwoman Linda W. Cropp. "I was singing with the best of them: 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame,' " Cropp said yesterday in her own recorded speech, broadcast last night on WTOP-AM.

Now, Cropp has emerged as the mayor's chief adversary. On Friday, she introduced a plan to instead build the new stadium adjacent to RFK Stadium, the former home of Washington's last team, the Senators. Original estimates put the price of the Anacostia stadium at about $440 million, including financing costs, but an analysis by the District's chief financial officer increased the cost to about $530 million.

Cropp said her plan would cost the city 20 percent less than at the Anacostia River site.

The mayor, surrounded by 20 business leaders in the afternoon, said he was told by Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, one of baseball's negotiators, that "if you undo this deal, you will not see baseball in the District."

Standing beside the mayor, Robert Peck, president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, said: "The RFK site was discussed in the negotiations with Major League Baseball, and it was rejected."

Reinsdorf referred all calls to Major League Baseball.

Yesterday, at a news briefing, Cropp said she lacked the votes to pass her bill but that she believed Williams' bill also would fall short.

Councilman Jack Evans, a baseball advocate, said he will offer the mayor's plan today regardless of whether the votes are there for passage. First, though, Cropp will have the opportunity to introduce her plan as a substitute.

Cropp also could move to delay the vote. She said that a postponement would be acceptable because it would give the parties more time to negotiate.

"We have to sit down, talk, negotiate and come up with something that is reasonable," she said. "If the mayor has the votes [today], then I guess it's somewhat moot."

Cropp said business leaders have told her they are concerned about a provision requiring firms with the highest gross receipts to pay a tax on a sliding scale of as much as $48,000 - up from the originally proposed $28,000 -- to help fund the stadium. The team would play at RFK Stadium while the new stadium was being built.

Council members continued to talk privately about the rival stadium plans into the night, and planned to discuss the matter at a private breakfast meeting before their morning vote.

Councilman Jim Mendelson, who appeared with Cropp yesterday, said the best scenario would be a compromise supported by more than a bare majority.

"I think the mayor has not been productive. I think the mayor has been drawing a line in the sand," Mendelson said. "If the mayor wanted to sit down again with baseball, he could do it."

Mendelson said Cropp was willing to modify her plan if need be. "I'm confident she'll get seven votes," he said.

Any plan approved today will require final approval by the council next month.

Williams said any delay would invite disaster. "This city made a commitment: to build a ballpark on the waterfront. When Major League Baseball awarded us a team, we endorsed that commitment. I'm keeping it. It's time for others to keep it, too," the mayor said.

John McHale Jr., an MLB vice president who was involved in the negotiations to bring the Expos to Washington, said last week that because the council has until the end of the year to pass stadium legislation, baseball would be noncommittal.

Yesterday, McHale declined again to comment on whether baseball considered moving the stadium site to be a deal-breaker.

"This is an issue for the mayor and the council to figure out, and I can't imagine that the process can be helped by me or anybody else on the relocation committee getting involved in local politics," he said.

Orioles majority owner Peter Angelos, who vehemently opposed relocating the Expos to Washington because he said it would weaken both franchises, declined to comment.

One reason baseball officials prefer the waterfront location is because they see it as similar to the site of Petco Park in San Diego, which opened last season to great fanfare.

Baseball officials like the opportunity for redevelopment in an underdeveloped part of the District. They see a new stadium as an anchor for urban renewal and economic development in an area where it wouldn't otherwise happen.

Williams said his office and a proposed team ownership group received 13,000 letters supporting his plan in the past few weeks.

Sun staff writer Ed Waldman contributed to this article.