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Letter to the Editor by Ralph Nader Baseball Shouldn't Strap the City Regarding Tom Boswell's Dec. 17
column, "If Washington Wants
Team, Time to Play Ball" [Sports]:
Any option other than a privately financed stadium on the RFK campus is a
bad deal for the city. Although Major League Baseball wouldn't admit it, it
wants the giant D.C. market so much that it would move here even without
public subsidies. Of course, it still will try to squeeze as much as possible from
the District.
Besides stripping funds from the unmet needs of our city, public subsidies for
owners of sports teams encourage waste, inefficiency, inflated stadium costs
and cost overruns -- economics team owners would address if they had to
pay for stadiums themselves.
If team owners bore the cost of a stadium here, they would choose the RFK
site, which is the most economically viable, already has the infrastructure in
place and faces the least neighborhood opposition.
But with D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams promising as much as $300 million in
public funds toward a stadium, at least one prospective ownership group
craves the valuable Mount Vernon Triangle site and its ancillary commercial
development opportunities. This area would be undergoing redevelopment by
now as a predominantly residential downtown neighborhood if baseball
weren't holding it up.
If local citizens, city officials, team owners and business leaders believe a
baseball stadium is needed and financially sound, private capital should be
raised to finance the project in the most feasible location as was done
successfully in San Francisco and a few other cities.
RALPH NADER
If Washington Wants Team, Time to Play Ball |