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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/sports/conten...lmore_0930.html

 

Ballpark as shelter best shot for Marlins

 

By Charles Elmore

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

 

Friday, September 30, 2005

 

MIAMI GARDENS ? By all indications, the Florida Marlins are ignoring the most brilliant political advice for a stadium in many years.

 

Build a baseball stadium that doubles as a hurricane shelter. Put it somewhere central to the region but off the coast, perhaps next to Dolphins Stadium. The idea comes from Weston Mayor Eric Hersh and City Manager John Flint.

 

"We haven't heard directly from the team," Flint said Thursday. "We've had a lot of positive comments. Our object was to try to, for lack of a better term, legitimize use of public funds for a stadium."

 

Their proposal: The Marlins would pay for the baseball portion of a retractable-roof stadium. Government would pay for a hurricane shelter much better designed than the New Orleans Superdome, the scene of much misery after Hurricane Katrina. The facility would be built to withstand a Category 5 storm and shelter its victims. It would be stocked with generators, showers and extra restrooms. It would serve as a staging area for relief efforts during a serious storm, when the Marlins could not play anyway.

 

Marlins executives received a letter outlining the plan two weeks ago, a team official confirmed.

 

Yet the Marlins, politically tone-deaf in a series of failed attempts to blackmail the state legislature with threats to leave, offer no signs they have picked up the tune. Before the Marlins' game at Dolphins Stadium on Wednesday, team President David Samson declined to discuss what stadium plans he and team owner Jeffrey Loria are considering.

 

"We've had no comment because we were asked by Jeffrey to evaluate all options prior to making another comment, and that process is on the cusp of being completed," Samson said. "We've been reviewing all our options."

 

Hersh and Flint don't say who would pay how much. They do suggest the ideal site is not in downtown Miami, where the Marlins have been looking. One option is building a stadium right next to Dolphins Stadium in northern Miami-Dade County, where the Marlins now play. It even offers the possibility of dovetailing with expansion plans for the site by Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga, in a bid to attract more Super Bowls and other events.

 

Wherever the precise location, the beauty of this idea is twofold.

 

First, it gives the Marlins something to offer besides the usual hold-up threat: Build it or we leave. That has flat-out failed at the state level. This plan ties their aims to a larger public purpose.

 

Second, it's smart in the street-level political sense. Response to disasters, and preparing better for them, is one of the few taps of government money flowing right now at any level.

 

It has to be legitimate, of course. Gov. Jeb Bush and legislative leaders should ask emergency-management staff to study whether the idea makes sense before it ever gets to a vote. If it does, let voters approve through referendums wherever possible.

 

Hersh and Flint said they e-mailed their proposal to Gov. Bush and received an acknowledgement his office got it. Bush was traveling, spokesman Russell Schweiss said Thursday, and the plan has not come to the attention of a deputy chief of staff who deals with hurricane matters.

 

"It's way too early to say what support, if any, the governor would give to the proposal," Schweiss said.

 

But the Marlins should face facts: The math does not add up for the stalled plan for a stadium beside the Orange Bowl. The projected costs are rising, from $420 million to as much as $490 million, according to Miami-Dade Co. manager George Burgess. The plan was already $30 million short when state legislators refused to help last May. Now the gap is more like $100 million. The site already posed access problems for fans from Broward and Palm Beach counties.

 

Now is the time to listen to a fresh idea.

All good ideas here. We just don't know exactly where the Marlins are with other options. I'm looking forward to their announcement in the off-season. Perhaps next week?

I'd like to say I have faith that Samson will jump on a great idea.

 

I'd like it if I could say that.... :confused

I'd like to say I have faith that Samson will jump on a great idea.

 

I'd like it if I could say that.... :confused

 

 

The FO may wait until they have exhausted their current offer before they change directions.

Does anyone here have a background in superfund sites and the status of the remediation of Ojus site?

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