Baseball in Arlington? No thanks

The Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation yesterday started an aggressive public relations effort against the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority and its intention to build a ballpark on land owned by the foundation and its partners in Pentagon City.

Cafritz Foundation executives, acting in concert with its business partner, the District-based H Street Building Corp., yesterday released the results of a commissioned opinion poll showing 64 percent of Arlington residents against a new stadium in the county.

Officials of both organizations additionally spoke out for the first time about the proposed stadium. Before yesterday, only foundation attorney John Barron had publicly communicated the group’s heated objections to the proposed ballpark.

“We have owned this land for more than 50 years and intend to continue to own it for another 50 years, and another 50 years after that,” said Jack Ritchie, H Street Building Corp. president. “There has been much speculation about the possibility that, if we do not agree to sell to the Stadium Authority, they may attempt to take our site by condemnation. It’s an unfortunate situation when a long-term landowner is forced to incur substantial expense to keep the government from coming along and taking his property for what is really a private use.”

Ritchie said he and the foundation would not sell “at any price.”

The foundation and H Street Building Corp. have proposed jointly to build a series of mixed-use towers on the land, as well as a high-end conference center on the north end, near Army-Navy Drive. Applications for the projects are currently on file with Arlington County officials, with construction to begin as soon as 2005.

To support that effort, the two organizations yesterday also released a preliminary economic study projecting at least $400million emanating directly from that proposed development between 2004 and 2033. A ballpark, conversely, would retain all of its immediate tax revenues to retire the construction debt on the building over that same time period.

Stadium authority executive director Gabe Paul Jr. yesterday said, as he has for weeks, that “we feel confident that once we get an award of a team, we will be able to negotiate with any landowner.”

Added Authority chairman Michael Frey: “Businessmen and developers hate uncertainty. Once the uncertainty of what baseball is going to do is gone, we feel very confident we would able to talk to [the Cafritz Foundation].”

Barron this year has written letters to Major League Baseball, the stadium authority and then each team owner asking for the Pentagon City land to be taken off any prospective stadium site list.

The Cafritz Foundation, named for one of Washington’s most prominent developers, is one of the largest owners of commercial property in Pentagon City. Other foundation-owned tracts there include the James at River Place apartment complex.

Arlington board members have not taken an official position on a ballpark in the county but have asked for a study on the opportunity costs of the three proposed ballpark sites in the county. The others include the site of the current Costco store in Pentagon City and the River Place apartment complex in Rosslyn.

Major League Baseball’s relocation committee originally intended to make a recommendation on the future of the Montreal Expos by Tuesday’s All-Star Game. But any type of decision on the Expos next week is unlikely, and a growing number of baseball insiders believe that relocating the Expos before the 2004 season is all but impossible. Northern Virginia is competing for the club with the District and Portland, Ore.

The opinion poll, taken between July 2-7, directly opposes one released in May by the stadium authority that showed 55 percent of Arlingtonians favoring a stadium. Questions in the authority poll took great pains to mention proposed stadium elements such as a youth field and the use of no general fund revenues for financing. This newest poll included none of those.

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