THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 26, 1996 TAG: 9604260001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
If a major-league arena is ever to be built here, the question of where to build it may have to be put aside while two cold-eyed questions are answered:
1. Would the Hampton Roads business community buy the luxury boxes and advertising necessary to support a major-league team?
2. If so, could Hampton Roads attract a major-league team, presumably from the National Basketball Association?
Those are answerable questions. All that's needed is roughly $100,000 to hire a consultant to find out the answers.
The emotionally loaded question - where to put an arena - need never be asked unless the answer to the first two questions is yes.
Besides, if a major-league team is drawn here, its owner may very well have final say on the arena's location.
As things stand, local governments cannot even agree on how to hire a consultant to answer the first two questions - the simple ones, the relatively cheap ones.
Councils for the two suburban cities, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, have both balked at the method for hiring a consultant proposed by the older cities Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk and Newport News. The older cities would have the consultant hired by a six-person executive committee representing the region's six largest cities, then paid by the region's localities and private business groups.
The Greater Norfolk Corporation and the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce are among business groups that have pledged to help pay a consultant. Certainly, having a major-league team here would benefit business, as well as sports fans.
Councils for Chesapeake and Virginia Beach argue that the desirability of having an open search for the consultant outweighs the need for involving the business community. ``I think we should go with a completely public organization because the stakes are high for all of us,'' Chesapeake Councilman John J. de Triquet said Tuesday, as that council voted to join with Virginia Beach in opposing the public/business approach to hiring a consultant.
The Hampton Roads Mayors and Chairs, an organization of the elected leaders of Hampton Roads' 10 cities and five counties, is scheduled to vote today on how to hire a consultant. But presumably the leaders of the localities are locked in by the votes of their councils and boards. Without flexibility, little can get done.
It may be that the older cities will have to do their own study to address the first two questions - will local business support a major-league team and can one be lured here - leaving for later the devisive question of where to put the arena.
It may be that the level of distrust between the suburban and older cities is so high that no major-league team will be attracted here until a generation of city leaders retires or dies off.
But you'd think adults would be able to agree on how to hire someone to answer two simple questions.
KEYWORDS: PROPOSED ARENA
by CNB