THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 14, 1996 TAG: 9609140009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 70 lines
Hampton Roads' best bet for getting a major-league arena is some kind of regional deal giving something to everybody - the arena in one city, a colossal convention center in another, and so forth.
The Oklahoma City area pulled off such a deal. The city got the arena but surrounding localities got enough public goodies to persuade a majority of voters to favor a tax increase for funding the whole package.
Regrettably, that kind of regional deal has no chance of success in Hampton Roads at this time, not with Virginia Beach and Norfolk at odds over a water report. Over the past eight months, elected regional leaders couldn't even agree on how to hire an arena consultant. The first step was too high for them.
Norfolk Mayor Paul D. Fraim, who has led the effort to build the arena, backed away earlier this week from his insistence that the arena be in downtown Norfolk. Let the team owner decide the site, he said.
Fraim suggested that a statewide lottery is now Hampton Roads' best hope for building the arena, projected to cost $140 million and to seat 20,000.
If the lottery truly is this region's best hope, don't bother to keep your evenings free for major-league sports.
A commission on which Fraim serves recently recommended that the General Assembly consider lottery money as a financing source for a proposed $300 million baseball stadium in Northern Virginia. Baseball supporters are hoping to entice the Houston Astros to move to Virginia's Washington suburbs.
So why not still another lottery game to help make debt payments on a Hampton Roads arena?
The truth is, lottery officials already squeeze all they can out of the games the Virginia Lottery has now. To raise extra money, they'd probably need really hard-core gambling games like Keno, with a drawing every five minutes, or slot machines. It's doubtful either would be acceptable to the General Assembly.
Any acceptable new state gambling game to fund the Hampton Roads arena would take money from other state gambling games, not pull new money out of thin air.
In Maryland, for example, a new sports lottery game was begun to help finance major-league sports facilities. According to the Maryland Lottery, it raised no new lottery money. Instead, it cannibalized money from other lottery games. The state of Washington fared a little better. Half of the take from a lottery game to fund a sports facility was cannibalized from other games. Half is still not good, when you take into account that Virginia legislators are spending all income from existing Virginia Lottery games on state programs.
It seems unlikely that legislators and the governor would favor a new game that stole customers from games whose income goes to the state.
Since the lottery deal probably won't fly, Hampton Roads might consider a statewide deal that offers something for other parts of the state and thus gains the support of a majority of legislators.
For example, Hampton Roads might support state funding for the baseball stadium in Northern Virginia only if those folks support state funding for our arena. Then, to win a majority of votes in the legislature, another city, possibly Roanoke, would have to be offered state funding for something grand in exchange for its support of state funding for sports facilities in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.
In other words, Mayor Fraim might try to do with cities around the state what he couldn't do with cities in our region - swing a deal.
We don't need a promise from Northern Virginia to help Hampton Roads get an arena in the sweet by and by. We need a deal.
If some such package had the support of the majority of legislators, funding could be arranged - perhaps a fraction-of-a-penny increase in the sales tax.
Still, if Hampton Roads cannot speak with one voice, arranging a statewide deal seems as unlikely as arranging a local deal.
The inability of Hampton Roads localities to cooperate may well kill any hope of ever having a major-league team in Southeastern Virginia. by CNB