I live in the DC area and would love to have baseball here but I think the City Council did the right thing. Make the new owner, or the current owner (MLB) pay for at least part of the stadium or find a private developer. I dont know that baseball has options other than DC but even if they do, I say let them go there. There's no reason for a city to cave into the demands to build free stadiums for billionaries.

With the obvious benefits that a ballpark would have provided the Anacostia area of DC with the economic stimulus necessary to help gentrify the neighborhood further. The benefits of the MCI Center to the area surrounding it have been enormous. I think we would have seen the same thing in Anacostia, but if the city isn't willing to handle it...

Then they get what they deserve.

I'm so very disappointed as an Arlington resident to see this team be forced out by a council that can't get its story straight.

As notes in a text from the Brookings Institute, Sports, Job and Taxes, the economic benefits of publicly financed stadiums is negligible, of not negative.

Yeah, new stadiums and sports teams don't stimulate the surrounding economy. Of course, MLB wants you to think otherwise.

and in reference to the effects of the MCI Center - I don't believe that the MCI Center was publicly financed. If I remember correctly, Abe Pollin (owner of the Wizards and, at the time, Capitals) paid for most of the phone booth.

so maybe that's why it has helped DC - they didn't have to foot the bill.

ok. i found the specifics - the MCI Center cost $260 million and was financed by private loans (raised by Pollin).

The DC govt added $60 million for infrastructure - metro stop, upgrading and widening sidewalks, etc.

see the URL linked to in by name for more.

As a huge baseball fan and a resident of Northern Virginia I'm very happy by this decision. Economists are in near universal agreement that these stadiums do not lead to economic development. Publicly financed stadiums simply transfer wealth from taxes to a few private businessman. I know that in this case the majority of the money was to be raised from new business taxes and hence it wasn't going to "cost" the city anything. That's ridiculous. There is a limit to how high taxes can be and if you create new taxes for this purpose you won't be able to go to the well for something else.

Cheers for the city council. Jeers for Thomas Boswell and his ilk who want to enjoy baseball but who aren't the ones who would have to pay for it.

Finally screw MLB and their extortionist schemes.

I agree with Gaelan - screw MLB's extortionist schemes! It's crazy what they are doing - threatening to pull out of DC after one year because the city doesn't want to give money to billionaire cry babies.

While in a perfect world all stadiums would be privately financed that isn't reality. There will be other cities willing to pony up so maybe it's a good thing if baseball doesn't have a long term committment to a city that has already tried and failed twice as a baseballl city.

Maybe the Marlins have been greasing the skids for the Expos to move to Vegas.

While I agree that the public should not have to pay for the costs of a private team, the bottom line is that this move should have been wrapped up in advance with ALL issues of financing resolved prior to making it official. This appears to be yet another example of Bud Selig putting the cart before the horse. Witness the supposed demise of the Twins, only for them to still be around. How can any fan in the D.C. area want to attach an emotional (and financial) bonding to a team that may once again be on the move a year later. Don't unpack those bags just yet Washington Nationals!!

The fact is a committment was made and now a comiitment was broken... The fans of DC should have no ill will towards MLB, it is the incompetence of the fools who run the city who originally made a deal that they weren't prepared to live up to.

Whether or not the decision to require private financing is the right decision making an agreement that didn't include private financing and then breaking that agreement is 100% wrong.

IIRC, while the mayor signed an agreement it always had to still get the funding from city council. This is an historic act, the DC City Council doing the right thing (of course it could be that Peter Angelos bribed the council to not fully fund the stadium.)
While I'm an NFL Giants fan, I did admire Jack Kent Cook using his own money to build the Redskins' new stadium.

Cropp is simply engaging in a cheap political stunt meant to help her bid to become mayor. Whether or not publicly financing a stadium is a wise thing to do, the fact was that was the deal, and this last second attempt to change the deal is nothing more than the city council acting in its ever-incompetent fashion. So spare the lauds for this group - it's no wonder this city is the national joke it is.

Normally, I'm anti-public funding, but this is the exact case in which public funding is justified.

If you know DC, it is in a horrible hole. A good half of the city has slipped into slums and worse. They can't keep their schools systems open, can't police the entire city effectively, can't keep the water clean, and so on.

So why spend money on a stadium? Aren't there more important things?

No. And here's why: DC's long term problem is that its problems have driven off the tax base to Virginia and Maryland. Unlike other cities, they didn't drive off those people to other regions in the same state. Basically, DC keeps losing the revenue it needs to turn around the city.

Building a stadium and having a team may just be shuttling money from Virginia and Maryland to DC, but that's a plus! It isn't creating jobs or revenue, but in this, stealing that money from the suburbs is a good thing.

MCI Center has completely revitalized Chinatown. Again, the DC Metropolitan Area has a net effect close to zero, but that neighborhood in DC has benefited at the expense of say, a movie theater in Virginia (or the Cap Center in Landover, MD, where the Hoyas, Caps and Wizards used to play).

The sabermetric crowd is getting almost as dogmatic about some issues as the non-sabermetric crowd. The conclusions of those studies aren't changing here, but the goal of a stadium in DC is different than say, building a new stadium for the Yankees in Manhattan or something like that.

Great points Alan.

NoVa is not willing to fund a ballpark, is it? Is Vegas? We can find someone to fund half a ballpark, and I don't see any reason why MLB would move anywhere else.

Yeah, I guess the question is: can MLB find a better deal elsewhere? If MLB leaves DC, would any other city step up and offer a better deal to them?

A couple of quick points. The city didn't make a deal with MLB, the mayor did. Just like the Kyoto treaty has to pass congress, this deal has to go through council. The argument that a deal is a deal is disingeneous. The fact that this is the best they can come up with is sad.

Second while Washington certainly is in need of some urban investment a baseball stadium is still a giant sinkhole. Modern stadiums are designed to keep as much of your spending as possible within the stadium. That means it will leak out of the local economy just as fast as it came in.

Finally, where are they going to go? While I wouldn't be surprised to see MLB try and screw Washington in order to save face the fact is they don't have a better offer out there.

So, after baseball got DC to bid against itself, now DC returns the favor - "Hey, MLB, see if anyone else is gonna pony up $300M+ - and good luck!"

I had lived in Tampa and I was a part of the volunteer movement to bring baseball to Tampa. At that time the stadium planned for Tampa was going to be privately financed. I have yet to figure out why stadiums need to be publiculy financed. George W made most of his wealth from being given the land around the Ballpark and then selling that land and the stadium to Tom Hicks.

Why do we continue to provide welfare to million/billionares ???

Now it is my impression, which could be incorrect, the DC has actually broken some promises. Either way Bud looks like a moron in this whole thing. And yet what is knew. This whole scenario reminds me of something from the Bard.

"A fool tells a story, full of sound and fury signifying nothing."

I voted against Enron (Minute Maid) Field. And I bleed rainbow gut colors. I voted against Toyota center, where our local proffessional wrestling team, the Rockets, perform 41 times a year.

I would have voted agaist Reliant stadium, but then, that one was built by consumers (private seat liscences).

Love sports, pay for it gladly with my discretionary dollars. Will fight tooth and nail to keep it being 'supported' with tax dollars.

Mark

Las Vegas can and will support a MLB franchise if this decision by the morons on the DC Council get their way.

The amount the city is renegging on is a high enough dollar figure for MLB to get over its hesitation about having a MLB team in Sin City.

As an Orioles fan I hope this DC decision derails the whole baseball in DC movement. A city run by clowns does not deserve to be a Major League city.

It's not the sinin' that's the problem with Vegas - its just not big enough to support a major league team. Yeah, its fast growing and all that. But its metro area has less people than metro areas like Milwaukee, San Antonio, and Columbus. A team in Vegas would play in what would be, by far, the smallest baseball market. Its more than one million people smaller than the Baltimore metro area (without the DC part) and O's fans are always complaining about being a small market team. Vegas just isn't viable.

Plus, for all the talk about money in the Vegas metro there's not that much of it. Median family income is $48,420. DC metro median is $72,247.

DC is the place for the team and MLB knows it. They're pissed off and rightly so. But when they calm down they'll find a way to make it work. From a business standpoint (and it is a business, as we all know too well) there is no other choice.

IF you put the Expos in Las Vegas, is there going to be more division shuffling? Will the Rockies get bumped to the Central and the Pirates to the East? Or are we going to go back to the days of the Atlanta Braves winning the West?

A quick question about public financing of stadiums - do any of the studies address the issue from the perspective of bringing a team to a town where none before existed? It's easy to believe that spending a fortune in public money to move a team from one building to another within the same market does little for the economy, but I wonder if the analysis also accounts for bringing a new team to a market. On its face, it certainly seems more likely that this kind of public investment would be more likely to bring ecomomic benefits.

It makes more financial sense for the owners to contract the Nationals after the 2006 season where the players association cannot contest it.

There was plenty of private and municiple money for MLB available in Northern Virginia (Arlington and Loundon sites). Build the stadium there and rent RFK until completed. MLB or the new owner can pay the 15 Million RFK renovation as the temporary tenant. The team can still be called the Washington Nationals. Redskins play in Landover and are not called the Maryland Redskins.