THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 23, 1994 TAG: 9406230498
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940623 LENGTH: Long
He visits a host of up-and-coming cities on the nation's sunny underside. He gauges the thirst for sports in each, scours market reports, hires advisers. And he takes a shine to a seaport of 1.5 million souls at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
{REST} So he moves. His team is enormously successful. Hampton Roads becomes a sports Mecca.
Ah, fantasy - ain't it grand? You get to skip all the noisome, real-life details that pop up en route to Happily Ever After.
Details such as: ``The owner must rely on a jigsaw puzzle of headstrong cities to pool enough cash for his new arena.''
And: ``Before that happens, a bunch of big egos must be convinced that a team in one city benefits the others.''
And: ``Hampton Roads must behave as a region.''
Whether Hampton Roads goes big league may well turn on such particulars - on whether the region's cities can set aside decades of bad habits and bad manners, forgive past grievances and shake off over-the-fence slights.
The road to The Show is paved with money. While private cash usually controls the teams themselves, public money - or some combination of public and private - usually foots the bill for stadiums or arenas in which they play.
And though it might be theoretically possible for one city to lure a team to the area without neighborly aid, building a modern, major-league sports facility more likely would require combined municipal pocketbooks.
That means, regardless of whether a team seeks a home here or Hampton Roads goes trolling for a team, the region faces difficult, potentially divisive decisions before it can consider itself a real contender: Where to build? How to split earnings?
These questions, daunting anywhere, are made more so by the area's geographic and political quirks.
``The dynamics are tilted here,'' said Greg Wingfield, executive director of Forward Hampton Roads, the economic development arm of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. ``I think there's a burning desire for a team - I think we've shown that with hockey and with the recent support for the Tides.
``But you have no central city that is dominant. Norfolk might be the financial and cultural and artistic hub, but it's not recognized as that by Virginia Beach. And Virginia Beach is the largest city in the area.''
Without a clearly dominant player, the area's cities compete more than cooperate.
``For all the talk you hear about regionality, I just haven't seen it,'' said Virginia Beach Councilman James Brazier. ``I just don't think there's a great effort out there to work together.''
``Until such time as regionalism and regional cooperation becomes more important to all of us,'' agreed former Beach Mayor Harold Heischober, ``we just will not pull off a major activity . . . I don't know that we'll be able to build a major stadium.''
Building one isn't going to happen tomorrow, local leaders say. But it may behoove the region to decide how and where it would host a franchise now, rather than wait until a team expresses interest.
That doesn't mean proceeding with construction. As former Norfolk Mayor Joseph A. Leafe said: ``I find it very hard to see any of our communities, Norfolk included, building on some spec basis.''
Rather, it means ironing out differences ``so that we're in a position to grab opportunities when they're presented to us and we don't have to go around, hat-in-hand, to all the cities to try to find out how it goes,'' said Mike Barrett, executive director of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. ``You're not competitive when you have to do that.''
``To build a facility without having some commitment is foolish,'' Wingfield said. ``But to have that lined up if you can get the commitment, I think, is the way to go.''
Agreeing that this needs doing is different from doing it, however. Wingfield suggests that the best course would be to hire a sports consultant without ties to any one Hampton Roads city.
``You say, `Look, if we were to go out and build a major sports facility, a stadium, given our infrastructure, our highways and so forth, where would be the best place to locate this thing?' '' he said. ``I think that's the best way to get away from those egos.''
The consultant could be hired, Wingfield and others said, by a regional body such as the Hampton Roads Sports Authority or a similar group composed of representatives from cities throughout the region.
``My judgment is that if it's promoted as a regional team, you can safely avoid any particular city claiming it,'' said former U.S. Rep. G. William Whitehurst. ``What decides it should be: Who's got the room? Who's got the access?''
``What makes it work financially is what it would have to come down to,'' said Beach Councilman Louis Jones.
Could the region's cities be counted on to agree on anything - even the hiring of the consultant?
Certainly, regionalism has enjoyed some success. Hampton Roads' landfills and recycling programs are financed by a combination of cities. Tidewater Regional Transit owes its existence, and its budget, to a municipal partnership. A collective runs the area's sanitary sewer system. And Virginia Beach would be parched without Norfolk's water.
But the record is blemished. Norfolk leaders are still smarting over the 1989 death of a proposed light rail system linking downtown to the Virginia Beach Pavilion.
A few days before the Norfolk and Beach city councils met to consider the proposal, both cities' leaders powwowed at a Greenwich Road hotel to strategize.
Norfolk reps suggested that their city's council, which was firmly behind light rail, vote first - it might clinch the dicier Beach vote. Norfolk Councilman Paul D. Fraim recollects that Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf implored the Norfolk leaders to wait until her council had voted, saying that she wanted to avoid putting too much pressure on her colleagues.
``Come Tuesday morning I pick up the paper,'' Fraim said, ``and find that the mayor has voted against it.''
Then there was Norfolk's 1991 proposal to replace aging Met Park with a downtown ballpark, an effort nearly derailed by the Tides' management board and an eager Virginia Beach.
The price tag for building a stadium eventually cooled the Beach's enthusiasm - but not before Norfolk leaders were left feeling betrayed and angry.
Far more infighting goes on behind the scenes: Time and again, Hampton Roads cities have elbowed one another in a race to lure new business to town, often to the detriment of the entire region.
Tax dollars are at stake in those business recruitment deals - and in luring a big-league sports team, even more is on the line. The city that hosts the franchise might be part of the team's name and leap into the American consciousness, enjoying publicity worth millions of dollars.
``There would be healthy competition'' for an arena or stadium, Virginia Beach's Oberndorf predicted.
Beach Councilman Jones said he figures that might not be so bad.
``If I were the franchisee, I would be looking for choices,'' he said. ``I would want choices so that I could make sure I was getting the best deal I could get. I wouldn't see anything wrong with competition.''
On the other hand, healthy competition might degenerate into a fractious public squabble. While Norfolk Development Director Robert B. Smithwick opines that any deal ``won't be political - it'll be judged on the basis of its business potential,'' some observers view that as a tad optimistic. Jim Brazier, for one.
``I don't think Norfolk would seriously get involved with it unless it was in the city of Norfolk,'' the Beach councilman said.
``I think there's an honest desire on the part of city leaders in all the communities to try to reach an accommodation,'' said Whitehurst. ``Indeed, when we dropped Tidewater and tried Hampton Roads, that was an indication that we were interested in a regional approach.
``But I think it's a very, very, very long shot. We can't even get a rail line, rapid transit, running between Norfolk and Virginia Beach. There's an awful lot of provincialism in the area.''
The problem, said Norfolk Assistant City Manager Darlene Burcham, is largely one of timing: ``I think each community is moving on a continuum, and we're not at the same place on the continuum at the same time.''
``It would be a whole lot easier,'' Leafe said, ``if you had a team say, `Here is where we want to be.' ''
Assuming the consultant's on board, the tough part is just beginning. Once the recommendation is in, how do you keep the losers interested enough to participate?
``I think it's necessary that the political leadership be able to go back to its constituents and show where an entity in another city, town or county is necessarily helpful to the whole,'' Heischober said. ``And what's helpful to the whole is helpful to the individual.''
Indeed, local leaders say, this is the key: Any regional backing for a franchise must reward everyone involved.
``How do we find, institutionally, a way for a city to give up its own treasure, and with other communities build a facility in another community, and find a way . . . to take some of that back?'' asked Art Collins, executive director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, a panel that brings the region's governments together to wrestle with big issues.
When Portsmouth proposed building a racetrack last summer, it ``essentially offered shares'' in the development, Collins said. Other cities, as well as private-sector players, could invest in the project - and earn dividends on its success.
``That was a very enlightened thing for them to do,'' Collins said. ``They essentially said, `I will offer to other municipalities, that if they invest in my infrastructure . . . I will pay a return.'
``I think that that sort of thing needs to be more fully developed and then you get away from the competition.''
Such arrangements make sense in financing a variety of major investments, Collins said, whether they be athletic, commercial or industrial.
``Suffolk has a tremendous amount of land,'' he said. ``Suffolk, as a community of 52,000 people, can't put together a deal to bring a major corporation in there. But Suffolk, with money from a bunch of other communities, could put an infrastructure incentive package together to support something in that community.
``The quid pro quo would be that if that thing makes money, it is shared in some proportion with those who helped make it happen.''
Wingfield agreed: ``It just makes sense that if we can come up with some sort of financial arrangement, a bonding arrangement, whereby everyone shared with the financing and the risk, it would be a lot easier.''
Beach Councilman Robert K. Dean said horseracing recently presented an opportunity for such a partnership.
``If you recall, when Portsmouth and the Beach were making our bids for the racetrack, there was some talk that we could perhaps go in on this thing together and share the rewards,'' he said. ``I had no aversion to that, whatever.
``But in Virginia Beach, we evidently have a penchant for that track being located here. If that falls through, I think we really have to reassess our priorities, and start looking more globally.''
A collective approach will require more than financial incentive. It'll take heaps of political maturity.
The cities that don't land the team must set aside their municipal egos and recognize the benefits that cooperation could bring to the entire region.
``It may be the best single opportunity we'll have to make regionalism into realism,'' Smithwick said. ``I think that if there's going to be a major-league sports franchise in this part of the country, that's something that we should accomplish. If we don't, we sure are missing a major opportunity.''
Anything less than total commitment won't fly, said Blake Cullen, owner of the Hampton Roads Admirals hockey team.
``The only way it will work is for all the municipalities, from Elizabeth City to Williamsburg, to want it to work,'' he said. ``And if there's going to be a hassle over where an arena's going to be built, then don't even start.''
Examples abound of cities working together outside Southeastern Virginia, Cullen noted.
``Long Beach and Pasadena got behind the Los Angeles Dodgers,'' he said. ``They didn't find it insulting that the Dodgers weren't in their town.
``When you fly into this area, you fly into Norfolk International Airport. The lines of the cities shouldn't stop anyone. It would be a huge mistake if some particular city didn't get behind it.''
Fraim holds out hope that area cities can meet this order.
``I don't know all the members of the Beach council, but I do know the younger ones, that they really do take a broader approach to economic issues, tourism,'' he said. ``I sense that they understand that if the core city is sick, they'll soon catch the illness themselves. So they need, in their own interests, to ensure that Norfolk succeeds.''
Beach Councilman Jones also figures the cities could get together.
``Once the decision is made by the franchisee as to which location he would prefer,'' he said, ``there isn't any real reason why all the cities shouldn't cooperate with each other in trying to make it a reality.''
And, in fact, that happened in a limited way in 1991, after Norfolk and Virginia Beach vied for the new Tides stadium.
``When they realized that they lacked the will to build it,'' Fraim said of the Beach Council, ``they came back to us and said: `What can we do to help?'
``And we suggested that they table it, rather than vote it down - so that when we went to vote on it, it didn't look like we were voting on an idea that Virginia Beach had rejected.''
At Heischober's urging, the Beach Council agreed to postpone a vote indefinitely.
{KEYWORDS} MAJOR LEAGUES FRANCHISES
by CNB