DATE: Sunday, November 9, 1997              TAG: 9711090074

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

                                            LENGTH:   70 lines

VIRGINIA - NEWS BRIEFS

NORTHERN

Va. stadium authority will tour 3 ballparks with area leaders

ALEXANDRIA - The Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority plans to take government, business and community leaders on a tour of three popular new ballparks, as the effort to land a major league team for Northern Virginia accelerates.

This week's two-day tour will stop at Jacobs Field in Cleveland, Coors Field in Denver and the Texas Rangers' stadium in Arlington, Texas. It comes as the state-appointed authority prepares to select a final site for a proposed 47,000-seat stadium by next spring. The site most likely will be in Arlington, Fairfax or Loudoun County.

The Alexandria-based investor group trying to buy a team believes that two National League teams are possible targets for relocation. If its bid to buy an existing team fails, the group hopes to get an expansion team. Baseball owners have said they may announce the next round of expansion cities in 1999.

Next year ``is going to be a critical year for our whole effort,'' said Michael T. Scanlon Jr., executive vice president of Virginia Baseball Club L.P., the investor group. ``We are starting to move again.''

Baseball fever in Northern Virginia has been somewhat dormant in the last year, after the investor group led by telecommunications executive William L. Collins III failed for a second time to buy and relocate the Houston Astros.

The Montreal Expos and Pittsburgh Pirates are the two teams the investor group now is eyeing - especially the Pirates, after Pittsburgh voters last week rejected a financing plan for a new stadium for the money-losing team.

The Virginia stadium authority has quietly continued its work in the last year, hiring a former baseball executive as its full-time administrator and consultants to evaluate 11 possible stadium sites.

By January, the authority will choose two to four site finalists, with a final selection expected by the end of spring. And in April, state officials will begin testing whether the Virginia Lottery can raise the $14 million a year needed to help finance the $300 million stadium complex. ``We are going to get a ballclub. In my heart I know that, and I am convinced it is going to happen before 2000,'' said authority Chairman Kenneth L. Crovo, a Loudoun banker.

On the tour, the group will look at various possible designs, evaluate the differences between urban and suburban ballparks and examine the stadiums' effects on traffic and crime, authority officials said.

The authority's executive director, Gabe Paul Jr., said the trip will cost less than $30,000 and that the authority is footing the bill for everything except the hotel rooms in Arlington, which the guests will pay for.

But some critics of the plans for financing and building a Northern Virginia stadium said the trip sounds more like a lobbying effort than a fact-finding mission.

CENTRAL

Virginia Union's Simmons plans to retire in 1999

RICHMOND - S. Dallas Simmons, president of Virginia Union University, plans to retire on June 30, 1999.

Simmons, 57, made his announcement Friday at a meeting of the university's board of trustees, which accepted his resignation. He has been president since 1985.

Frank S. Royal, chairman of the board of the historically black college, credited Simmons with breathing new life into the 132-year-old institution. Royal said that the once debt-ridden university has operated with a surplus for eight years, tripled its endowment to $15 million, and increased enrollment from under 1,000 to 1,700.

Upon his retirement, Simmons said, he will explore other options in education or business.

Simmons will retire with one year left in his contract. Royal said the board will conduct a national search for his replacement, who would become the university's 10th president.

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