Thanks Scott, likewise I’m sure. Still I’d like you to show me one inner city school district that doesn’t share Richmond’s problems of underachievement and dropouts. Then let’s set up thread (john?) on that so we can give it the attention it deserves.

Mr. Gerner is still incorrect regarding the bonds. The worst case scenario in the current Bottom proposal is that the bondholders could take the park itself. That’s it. It is VERY misleading to compare the financing of this proposal with the previous Bottom proposal and with the Broad Street CDA, which incorporate City obligations.

Also, it’s important to note that the public/private money will not be in the developers’ hands at any point. It goes straight to the City to use to pay the bonds for the ball park only (not the developers’ own project components), with the excess going to the City to do with as it pleases (Slave Trail Museum? Schools? Sidewalks? Trees?)

New tax revenue from broad-based economic development is what is going to pay for new schools, new sidewalks and new roads. If Richmond doesn’t keep growing, it’s going to wither on the vine. We have some serious problems in this town that the counties and the state don’t want to help us with. Let’s start helping ourselves.

False. Absolutely false. Richmond has the OLDEST school buildings in the state. Other cities are not in violation of federal ADA law the way Richmond is.

Paul Hammond has a history of being a cheerleader for these corporate welfare schemes and everything he says should be questioned.

It doesn’t matter what fine ball teams, fancy opera houses and whatever else we get going, the sorry state of our school system will continue to be the “Shame of Our City.””

Bravo!

Get to know the children who know no fathers and know nothing of motherly love, then we can start doing something about poverty and stop blaming the school system.

Let’s debate the merits of a a stadium/development downtown on it’s merits. Dismissing proponents as morally apathetic is an intellectual cheapshot.

As new stories get posted, older stories are pushed lower down the front page. Eventually they are no longer on the front page. To view older posts, scroll to the bottom of the front page and click PREVIOUS. That will show you the next older batch of posts, and at the bottom of that page there will be a link for PREVIOUS. You can go back through this way and view all of the posts going back to 2004.

There is a also a search form on the right side of every page. A search for baseball pulls up many of the conversations that’ve been held on the topic.

There is also a drop-down just under the search form labelled ARCHIVES BY MONTH. This allows you to view the posts from any given month, which is useful if you roughly remember the date of something for which you are looking (or want to see things that were happening at the same time).

We will continue to complain and do nothing to integrate our schools into the mainstream of our lives. In short, the children who attend these schools will continue to be “other people’s children,” until we realize that our schools are indeed our future.

It doesn’t matter what fine ball teams, fancy opera houses and whatever else we get going, the sorry state of our school system will continue to be the “Shame of Our City.”

Re # 216 Response — I continue to ask for some documentation that establishes that this is a cost effective use of valuable resources and, so far, no one has produced any examples — or documentation — to back up your case that this project is worth the time and trouble it will take from this city.

This baseball stadium is a monumental ego trip without any substantive facts to back it up. Sad.

#216
Baseball will not save us

I never said it would. It is just another piece of the puzzle that can draw people back downtown, spend some time and money and rediscover Shockoe Bottom.

I have looked for articles that would support your theory that it will save Richmond from being an “economic cripple” and I have to tell you, the literature doesn’t support the theory.

My concern has nothing to do with whether I personally like baseball.

It has everything to do with how this is such a bad idea from all perspectives that employ any factual analysis.

Show me some documentation that supports what you want to do and I will be happy to be supportive.

But, don’t ask me to suspend rational thought to jump on a bandwagon that appears headed for quicksand.

What does Gray have to do with Fan and UR guys peeing and puking in the streets 30 years ago? Just curious. Or should she worry that they may do the same in her art gallery? Maybe every guy in the Fan pukes in Shockoe Bottom, which allows you to call them jerks. Just wondering.

“if we would just stop chasing pie-in-the-sky solutions”
…
For instance, much has been said about having a “Slavery Museum.” Some have suggested that we make it a “national” slavery museum. Why not elevate it to international status’

Wouldn’t it be less “pie in the sky” to invest in a proven commodity that could draw 500,000 to the Bottom where they could also visit a slavery jail museum/interpretation site which is part of this project?

Why not invest heavily in the Virginia Museum for Fine Arts? The Folk Festival could be marketed internationally as well.

I think both those things are being done now.

Poverty and schools are complex and inter-related, but won’t be addressed by flat out opposition to this project which should be addressed on it’s own merits. Keeping Richmond an economic cripple only aggravates the problem.

I made my comments about basketball because I see that March Madness, NCAA and NBA generate far more excitement that the Braves or the World Series generates in Richmond. I don’t really care for it myself, but I have family members who love it.

If it were up to me, I honestly think that we should just forget about baseball and basketball and concentrate on making our schools right, our city safe, our museums world-class.

To my knowledge, Paris and London do not have basketball or baseball teams to draw people to their cities. Admittedly, Richmond isn’t Paris, but if we would just stop chasing pie-in-the-sky solutions and focus on basic quality-of-life issues, we would have far more to attract and retain citizens than we do now. Far more.

For instance, much has been said about having a “Slavery Museum.” Some have suggested that we make it a “national” slavery museum. Why not elevate it to international status and market it to tourists that are coming to Washington, DC and New York City?

Why not invest heavily in the Virginia Museum for Fine Arts? The Folk Festival could be marketed internationally as well. The French Film Festival has demonstrated that Richmond can go “international” when it chooses to …. why not invest in creating Richmond as an arts and culture town?

As a city we need to stop rushing here-and-there looking for a miracle and settle down and focus on something. It feels as if the business community suffers from collecttive ADHD and this makes the rest of us weary trying to figure out how to accommodate without totally alienating you.

Richmonders talk a real fine game about caring about the children and the safety of one and all, but when a “shiny thing” like the Performing Arts Center comes along, everybody is gung-ho thinking that will save us from ourselves. Baseball or Opera …. oh, gosh golly …. for pity’s sake — focus on something and stop flitting around.

Before that, the “shiny thing” was the 6th Street Marketplace and before that …. and before that …. There’s always something that the people in the business community band together and decide is more important than fixing our schools or making our streets safe.

And, now this baseball stadium. When I reference something, Jim, I provide a link to it, but since you didn’t, I googled the Richmond “Rhythmn” [really dumb name, pardon me], and this is what I found:

What’s In A Name? The Rhythm Says It Knows The Score

By Scott Bass
Like every other Sunday morning, gospel music pumped through the speakers of Ralph Sampson’s green Toyota Landcruiser en route to church. Call it divine intervention, perhaps: The 7-foot-4 inch former NBA star was taken by the rhythm.

“Everybody likes some kind of music,” Sampson recalls thinking on that fateful Sunday morning four weeks ago. “It just dropped right on us.”

Hence the brainstorm that produced the nickname of the city’s latest basketball franchise, the Richmond Rhythm. What’s with the name? Who really associates River City with a musical history?

Sampson, executive vice president and general manager of the team, says he would have preferred a public naming contest, but had little time to conduct one.

Among the names considered and rejected when the ex-Wahoo came on board in early May: the Rebels, Flavor, Road Dogs and, um, the Raccoons.

Welcome to the bizarre world of naming sports teams. It used to be that tigers, bears, cowboys, eagles and lions dominated the sports-name landscape. But teams are running out of aggressive-sounding animal names, some say, leaving new franchises with the task of finding unused, unlicensed nicknames. Sports fields are littered with everything from Sand Gnats to Banana Slugs, to the abstract forces of Orlando’s Magic and the Miami Heat.

The Rhythm will drop on Richmond this November at the Coliseum. University of Virginia standout Sampson, one of the NBA’s great disappearing acts, is even pondering a return to the hardwood himself as part of the team.

The new team, which is part of the International Basketball League, has all the makings of a cable-TV special. If Sampson chooses to play and if former U.Va. star Harold Deane joins the squad, Richmond could finally have a sports team that fills a few seats.

Naming a team, however, is a complex matter.

The two recent examples locally, the Rhythm and Richmond Speed (an indoor football league franchise announced by Renegades owner Harry Feuerstein in April), follow the now defunct Richmond Rage, a women’s basketball team that moved to Philadelphia before the American Basket-ball League tanked late last year.

“Alliterations are good mnemonic devices, but only if they impart true meaning,” says Elizabeth Goodgold, owner of The Nuancing Group, a branding consulting firm located in San Diego. “What’s the benefit of having rhythm connected to a basketball team?”

Goodgold takes exception to Sampson’s favored name, however. “I don’t think Richmond is known for its rhythm the way New Orleans is for its jazz.”

Though dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was born here, one might be hard-pressed to make a case for Richmond’s rich musical history. The Statler Brothers, mind you, are from Staunton. In its favor, the Richmond team’s name can be molded into a nice logo, which is a key reason why many new teams are opting for the abstract.

The Rhythm’s team colors are red, yellow and black, and the logo includes a basketball with three musical notes. The nickname and logo appeals to a broad audience, says Sampson.

“There is a lot of information that documents the increased revenue in these new logos,” says Gregory M. Pickett, assistant professor of marketing at Clemson University. “The licensing revenues are becoming something the teams rely on.”

So what’s wrong with the market-ability of the old-fashioned lions and tigers? They’re old hat, marketing experts say. Total sales of licensed products from the big three – the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball – dropped from $7.2 billion in 1997 to $6.7 billion in 1998.

Part of the reason for the drop are teen-agers, the biggest buyers of licensed sports merchandise, who are looking for something new to call their own. They aren’t interested in the old Redskins and Cowboys.

Says Clemson’s Pickett, “It’s a fine line. You want to energize the brand while maintaining a kind of consistency.”

A good example: The traditionally black-pinstriped New York Yankees now sell team hats in colors such as red, yellow and baby blue, which have been a big hit with teens and can be found in the coolest MTV videos. Shifting colors on uniforms can be found in the NBA and NFL as well.

Of course, the minor leagues followed suit. Until the last few years, says John H. Antil, a marketing professor at the University of Delaware, most minor league baseball teams lost money. But franchise owners discovered they didn’t have to be just farm teams for the big leagues. A night out at the baseball diamond could be marketed as a family event.

To improve revenue, many teams also chose not to pay licensing fees to their major league counterparts in the 1980s and started venturing out on their own.

Minor-league baseball now boasts some of the weirdest – and most marketable – names around, including the Piedmont Boll Weevils, Lansing Lugnuts, Beloit Snappers, Carolina Mudcats and the Jupiter Hammer-heads. Not to mention the Toledo Mudhens.

The names work because they are distinctly local, says Nuancing Group’s Goodgold, “It’s marrying the concept of the locality with the personality.”

It’s also important that new teams find a name that doesn’t offend. The Washington Redskins recently lost federal patent protection after a group of Native Americans protested that the nickname was derogatory. For Sampson’s team, there may have been similar issues with the “Rebels.”"One of the things they have to do is deal with political correctness,” says Chris Ault, a public-relations executive with The Martin Agency. “Richmond’s a tough market. Your choices are already limited.”

Politics aside, some still take issue with the abstract names. Part of the problem with names like Heat, Magic, Rhythm and Speed, says Andy Appleby, president and CEO of General Sports & Marketing of Detroit, is that fans have a hard time identifying with them.

But not long after the Heat and Magic joined the NBA in 1988, traditional names started falling by the wayside, Appleby says.

“I don’t know what the life span of those teams will be,” he says of the Heat and Magic. “I don’t really understand it. I think there are a lot of great animal names out there still that haven’t been used.”

Sampson disagrees. “Rhythm is a good fit,” he insists. “It will have some longevity.”

Inside Business, June 1, 1999.

Forgive me for not remembering a half-baked idea that got floated out a DECADE ago.

So you are a huge proponent for basketball in Richmond and yet you don’t remember a failed basketball league from just a few years ago. Yet you claim that people who support minor league baseball (whose attendance is actually on the rise) are “out-of-touch.” As for an NBA team playing in the Siegel Center, which seats 7,500 with no luxury suites is just one more example of how out of touch you really are. But you’re right, we do need to learn from Gwinnett County, they have built their new stadium in the middle of nowhere, and it is not spawning growth. Building a stadium in a central location will only serve to encourage the kind of development Gwinnett is hoping for, and is not going to get.

If you — or anyone else — can counter with articles and fact-based information supporting building a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom, please do so.

I am sorry that a preponderance of the facts indicate that this is not a rational way to proceed at this point.

You can name-call all you like, but such responses do not enhance your argument.

Just the facts, Tiny. Just the facts. Emotion will never pay the bills.

And, this is interesting as well ….

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=b6ee4be9-7e5e-4ed3-893b-4650699e7ae0

Virginia ball club is reportedly interested in buying Defenders
Norwich team could move to Richmond if $15M deal is realized
By Claire Bessette
Published on 2/14/2009

The Richmond Rhythm? No, I don’t remember. Why am I in favor of bring an NBA team — like that is ever gonna happen, right ;(;(;( ???

We already have a Coliseum and the Siegel Centre. It would require no new construction, no new tax districts. We would use what we already have in place, for which we are still paying mightily.

The current deal on the table is a tangled mess and I hope the citizens and our alleged leaders take the time to read the fine print, lest we wind up like the folks in Gwinnett County.

Gwinnett officials says stadium still a deal – Despite overruns, and now lean times, 3 officials not sorry
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/m...

Play ball? Stadium deal continues to draw criticism as costs rise, slow economy hampers potential benefits
http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/01/12/focus1.html

Even more…
http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernom…/

John Sarvay has some excellent live-blogging from the meeting tonight at Holton Elementary on the various baseball options and concerns.

Check it out….

You know it is trouble when the politicians look cleaner than the developers and both of them want your money and neither care how they get it

I’ve lived here for more years than you have been alive, Anna, so believe me. Baseball just doesn’t cut it. Sorry to say, it is just so whitebread boring.

But, this town really gets excited over basketball and would go crazy if these developers wanted to try to bring in an NBA team.

This is how out-of-touch you people are. We’re in the middle of the greatest fiscal crisis our nation has ever experienced in most of our lifetimes, and we have a bunch of people acting like spoiled rich kids running around trying to force a damned baseball stadium on the town.

Re-think. Study the stats on the number of people who attend basketball events vs. baseball and you will see for yourself exactly what I am talking about.

Basketball, Anna … now, that’s a game.

Cheating the taxpayers may be a game to some, but it really should be a crime, for which there should come a serious reckoning.

As my Momma usedta say: “Y’all stop that right now, because if you don’t, somebody is gonna get hurt and somebody is gonna cry, and it won’t be me.”

Sounded to me like a slight against AA since we’re “settling”. I’m ecstatic there’s no AAA available.

The Wachovia center in Philadelphia holds 22k for basketball. The Siegel Center holds 7.5k. Stop with the ridiculous figures and schemes. The sensationalism isn’t an appealing argument.

For the record, all further arguments will be on the new discussion thread, no need to keep 2 threads going on the same topic (read: respond to this post in the other forum for discussion, please).

This town didn’t support the Braves when they were here and in all likelihood, they won’t support any baseball team that comes this way.

Why don’t you advise your developer bosses to go buy an NBA team. Now, that would really be something!

They could use the Siegel Center at VCU, which would actually help Stuart Siegel out since I see from this morning’s newspaper that Siegel’s company — S&K — is the latest in a growing list of Richmond companies to file for bankruptcy.

If the country weren’t in a financial crisis teetering on catastrophy, this might be entertaining. But, as it is it is dangerous and frightening.

It’s real people, not just some “pipedream”.

The additional stuff is used to make the Developers money but they will go against the people who are already in business. Just ask Norfolk about their Conference Center and their relationship with the people who developed it Marriot and how Marriot has always made sure they made as much money out of it in spite of Norfolk. or Go to Waterside and see how they burried that place into the dirt. and that is just the tip of the Iceberg Hampton has a few other disasters themselves and We want to copy them?

Richmond is what it is don’t try to make it some other city.

I’ve had to call them on twisting my words and inserting distorted meanings of what I have said.

It is a cheap rhetorical trick and they continue to do it because they must think we are too stupid to see what they are trying to do.

Why aren’t they giving straight answers to the questions that are asked?

Could it be, perhaps, that they are trying to hide something?