http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12727418.htm

 

Posted on Sun, Sep. 25, 2005

 

New pitch thrown in ballpark quest

 

By FRED GRIMM

fgrimm@herald.com

 

 

Eric Hersh offers what the faltering Marlins so desperately need: the perfect pitch.

 

Up to now, the baseball team has tossed out nothing but curve balls, relying on deception and exaggeration to persuade elected officials to give them land, money and tax rebates for a new stadium.

 

The problem has always been that $300 million rationale. When economists examined the hype about the economic benefits generated by a new ballpark, they slammed it right out of the stadium.

 

But Hersh, like the aging Robert Redford in The Natural, has come to the rescue of the Marlins, arguing that South Florida can hardly afford not to build a properly designed, centrally located stadium.

 

Without it, Hersh warns, there will be hell to pay.

 

NO MAJOR CENTER

 

The notion struck Hersh, the mayor of Weston, and City Manager John Flint as they reviewed their city's emergency plans after Hurricane Katrina smashed over the Gulf Coast. Shaken by what was unfolding in New Orleans and at the Superdome, Mayor Hersh and Flint realized there was no comparable structure in South Florida that could serve as a major evacuation center. No place to house thousands of storm refugees, provide emergency power and food and water until the crisis passed.

 

Suddenly, Hersh said, a new stadium began to make sense.

 

Before Katrina, arguments for a public-financed baseball stadium were based on tobacco-spit economics. Major League Baseball described a new stadium as more like a giant industrial engine than a part-time arena employing so many ticket-takers and beer vendors.

 

Two years ago, Florida State urban planning professor Tim Chapin went through 15 major studies by independent economists who examined the real effect of new sports stadiums. ''Almost to the last, these studies have found that sports facilities are not the economic development engines that they claim to be,'' he concluded. "The new spate of sports stadiums have had a small, sometimes negative impact on economic activity and employment.''

 

One University of Chicago professor suggested that flying over the town and tossing money out of an airplane would make as much economic sense.

 

A SKEPTICAL PUBLIC

 

The Marlins have suffered another problem pushing their stadium proposals. Lobbyists could grease some key public officials but they couldn't convince the actual public. In March, two statewide polls found, respectively, that 80 and then 82 percent of Florida voters opposed allowing tax breaks for professional sports arenas.

 

It made for a tough sell -- until Eric Hersh came off the bench last week: "We're in a community that's constantly in the path of major storms. We need a safe facility.''

 

Hersh wants a deal with the Marlins that would require a Category 5-proof stadium, stocked with emergency supplies and generators, with storm refuge as much a priority as a baseball. In a letter to the governor, state legislators and Marlins management, he suggested that the state subsidize a stadium-shelter, well away from the oceanfront (not in Weston).

 

MUST BE ACCESSIBLE

 

''It has to be in an area accessible to residents in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. We don't know where a major hurricane is going to hit us. We do know that we're going to be hit,'' he told me.

 

Hersh dismisses baseball's fanciful economic projections. His argument stems from the fear that haunts any public official here in hurricane alley who contemplates Gulf Coast catastrophes, who thinks of so many thousands of potential evacuees here with no place to hide.

 

Hersh's stadium economics are simple and incontrovertible. A hurricane-shelter design may be expensive, but leaving thousands of South Floridians vulnerable eventually will be a hell of a lot more costly.

 

Hersh adds a little velocity to his pitch: "For 30 years, they argued that it would be too expensive to fix the levee system in New Orleans.''

 

 

What Mr. Hersh doesn't understand is that those who argue against public financing of stadia aren't just economics professors. They stem from the (erroneous, yes) sentiment among many activists, politicians and members of the MSM that stadia rob people of essential services. And also from a general hostility towards athletes and sports fans.

 

I don't want to doubt Mr. Hersh's sincerity but this is not going to be anywhere near a slam dunk, knowing how many think.

I think it might work.

 

Finally, something positive about these damn Marlins.

Somewhere in West Dade like around the Dolphin Mall.

 

As far as this working...logistically speaking...I have no clue.

Mayor Hersh makes a point and put his political capital behind that point. One thing I think that should be realized is that South Florida has no such facility with a roof to cover.

 

The Astrodome has been serving Houston storm after storm at low cost and high reward.

 

You have to make the facility useful and multi-purpose. If it cannot be different sports, it must be different civic functions.

Where will the Marlins play if the stadium is full of evacuees?

Where will the Marlins play if the stadium is full of evacuees?

 

use your f***ing brain, if theres a hurricane coming theres not going to be a game.