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By The Hill Staff
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Posted: 10/13/04 12:00 AM [ET] |
The hysterics at The Washington Post sports section are doing their job. Baseball is back. This is bigger than Joe Gibbs! Bigger than Michael Jordan! Bigger than the Capitals! This can save Washington! Has anyone noticed that the noisier the media frenzy about sports here, the more resounding the flop that follows?
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DUNCAN SPENCER |
| Baseball’s new neighborhood: First and O streets S.E. |
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And has anyone noticed that the city, having dished up the idea of a $450 million stadium to get the down-and-out Expos here, is stuck with a bad deal? A bondholder’s nightmare?
Has anyone noticed the litany of financial troubles of debt-burdened stadiums: 1991’s Comiskey Park, 1992’s Camden Yards, 1994’s Coors Field, 1994’s Jacobs Field, 1998’s Diamondbacks Field, 1999’s Safeco Field? These are just the most obvious cases of new stadiums struggling with debt, low attendance or emergency refinancing.
Very few of the cheering throng bothered to go to the rather bizarre wasteland of sex clubs, obscure businesses, piles of rubble, scores of panhandlers and highway grime that is to become the new home of the new team. I did, wandering from P to O streets S.E. — past The Follies at 34 O St., the Club Washington and Club Bath Chain, past Secrets at 26 O St. In all, there are 27 parcels in the area to be cleared for the new stadium — 27 possible lawsuits, compensation cases, etc. etc.
The only thing the site has going for it is splendid views of the Anacostia River. The views make the site perfect for housing or mixed-use development, not a concrete-and-steel doughnut that will be empty, let’s face it, most of its life.
The thought that keeps reoccurring: Why not play at RFK? Permanently.
When Jack Kent Cooke wanted to build a new stadium for the Redskins, using part of the vast parking area out there between Eastern High School and Kingman Island, sensible voices were raised to urge the cheaper and simpler solution. To enlarge RFK.
That’s right. A local architect, since moved to Frederick, Md., testified to the City Council that enlarging RFK would be relatively inexpensive, could be done quickly, by adding another tier of seating (a second circle around the already circular structure), and could be done without demolishing the present playing field — in a single off-season.
Mayor Anthony Williams (D) and the city fathers are counting on an average of 30,000 patrons per baseball game as a financial starting line. There is much evidence that this is an unrealistic goal. Even the most cheerful of the promoters of the new stadium deal say that suburbanites, not city dwellers, will be the backbone of the ticket buyers — just as in the case of the Redskins and the Capitals. It was hard enough to get them to come to MCI Center; without the draw of the beloved Redskins, they would not have come to RFK. Now the city is expecting these people, who have showed their opinion of the city with their feet for 50 years, to flock to 2nd and O streets S.E. And who will pay for it? Not them. Us.
Williams and the eager business crowd ought now to do what Washington does best: procrastinate. The Expos are going to play at RFK for three years at least. Let the attendance tell the tale. If baseball works for RFK, then build the new stadium, or enlarge the old one. But not before.
When Cooke, in the nine years of wrangling from 1987 to 1996, offered to pay for a new stadium in Washington, it was the city that stood in his way. Now we’re on our hands and knees begging to throw gold at one of the worst teams in the National League, offering bribes to Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, offering to build a $450 million colossus in the middle of nowhere. |
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Call it kelly press
Hill’s writing family pens again — and again
The Hill’s writingest family, the Kellys, has produced another book — and another author, in Katy Kelly, whose book Lucy Rose: Here’s the Thing About Me promises to be the next best seller for subteen readers.
It was launched here last Sunday at a signing and reading session at Trover on Pennsylvania Avenue S.E.
Katy (actually the mother of two daughters, 19 and 16) is a reporter for U.S. News & World Report. What else could she be, considering the genes? Her father, Thomas Kelly, was a longtime reporter for the former Washington Daily News; mother Marguerite is the author of The Washington Post’s “Family Almanac” and of a recent book of her own. Brother Michael Kelly was the brilliant star of the family publishing dynasty when death cut him off in Iraq while gathering material for his Washington Post column and The Atlantic Monthly last year.
Now Katy Kelly has created Lucy Rose, a young girl growing up in the shadow of the Capitol’s dome here on the Hill. Who is she? “Actually a conglomeration,” laughed Kelly at her USN&WR office last week. “There are my two sisters, Meg [Rizzoli] and Nell [Conroy], and my daughters, Emily, 19, and Marguerite, 16.” The latter are the children of Katy Kelly and her husband, Steve Bottorff, art director for television’s “Nightline.”
The first-time authoress despaired of finding an agent for her work, and shipped it directly to Random House. The publisher promptly agreed to a large first printing, set up a Lucy Rose website and asked her to write another book about Lucy Rose, to be titled Lucy Rose, Big on Plans.
Is she thinking about a series? “Knock on wood,” Kelly said.
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arts center money
Senators give arts workshop big grants
Down the leafy part of Seventh Street S.E. below Pennsylvania Avenue’s bustle, the old B.B. French School, announced by a handsome columnar portico, warms its bricks in the autumn sun.
For decades, the converted 19th century school has been the Hill’s best-known art and culture center, as the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW). Over the past 32 years, most Hill kids have come in contact with its arts, dance, theater and other programs. Recently, thanks to the interest of three senators, CHAW has received some generous grant support.
The trio, Democrat Mary Landrieu (La.), independent James Jeffords (Vt.) and Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas), is credited with helping CHAW get a grant of $250,000 last fiscal year and $150,000 this year for capital improvements.
Landrieu and Hutchison are members of the Appropriations Committee, and Jeffords is a close neighbor to the building on 7th Street.
Executive Director Jonathan Darr said the bulk of the money has gone to build and outfit a digital-photo lab for a youth program and to improve interior safety items and heating/air conditioning. “This covers quite a lot of what we need,” Darr said.
He credits former executive director Jeffrey Watson; Laurie Gillman, president of the CHAW board of directors; and her husband, Mark Gillman, for creating the grant proposal that was sent to Senate Appropriations staff last year. This year’s money was earmarked for the nonprofit in the D.C. budget recently passed by the Senate.
CHAW appears to have reached a modest solvency. It will not need to host its annual fundraising gala, Winter Revelry, this year.
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METRO
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• Want to meet Kwame Brown? (The politician, not the hoop star, and surprise winner of City Councilman Harold Brazil’s [D-At large] seat.) Brown plans to meet and greet Hill voters at the home of longtime Democratic Party stalwart John Capozzi Oct. 19 at 1619 E St. S.E. “Bring your checkbook,” says Capozzi. ...
• Phyll-O-Ween it is: energetic Realtor Phyllis Jane Young is taking over from the former doyenne of 7th St. S.E., Lynne Breaux, with a Halloween fest she’s dubbed “the Haunting of the Hill III.” On Oct. 29, five houses will get $1,000 awards (to be donated to Hill public schools) for the spookiest, creepiest exterior. For details, call Stephanie Cavanaugh at (202) 544-2557. ...
• Super-developer Jim Abdo, who’s embarking on his biggest project, conversion of the Children’s Museum at 3rd and H St. N.E. into apartments, is to receive the Mayor’s Award for Excellence at the end of the month. The award is for the Bryan School development at 15th and Independence Avenue S.E., now sold out and sought after. ...
• Bon mots from Hill lawyer (and husband of longtime Ward 6 city Councilwoman Betty Ann Kane [D]) Noel Kane. “When I take friends from out of town to Eastern Market I tell them not to look up at the filthy ceiling, not to look down at the grimy floor — just look at the counters.” ...
• Check out the Barracks Row festival coming up at 11 a.m. this Saturday, which will draw more than 40 vendors to the newly spruced street, plus bands and gospel music groups, plus the opening of the Cafe Belgique in the 500 block. ...
• And don’t miss free guided walking tours of “Hill East,” starting from the Congressional Cemetery gate at 1801 E St. S.E. at 1 and 2:30 p.m. this Saturday, featuring Hill author, activist savant and sociologist Jim Myers. ...
• Saved by the budget — that nifty $5,000 tax credit for first-time D.C. homebuyers who earn less than $90,000 ($130,000 for couples), just approved by Congress. The tax boon — a direct reduction of the federal tax owed — applies to condos as well as houses. |
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