Mayor's ballpark plan has issues

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Mayor Anthony A. Williams told Major League Baseball exactly what it wanted to hear: the District would fully fund a new ballpark if it was awarded a team.

However, Williams' proposal raised new questions about the District's pursuit of a team even as it considerably upped the ante for the city.

Williams last week said he would submit to MLB a proposal to build a $340million ballpark on the grounds of RFK Stadium and pay for it with tax dollars.

The goal was to end delay at MLB on a decision on the fate of the Montreal Expos -- the franchise the District is trying to land -- and bring to a close years of fruitless, frustrating effort by groups in the area get a team.

However, Williams' plan does not guarantee baseball will return to the District. Some key questions remain:

Nowhere but RFK?

The District is proposing four sites to MLB's relocation committee: the RFK Stadium property, M Street Southeast, New York Avenue Northeast and the current home of Benjamin Banneker Park in Southwest.

The Williams Administration and a prospective ownership group led by financier Fred Malek prefer the three downtown sites to RFK Stadium, and they like the New York Avenue site in particular.

It's not hard to understand why. The best modern ballparks -- Coors Field in Denver and Jacobs Field in Cleveland, for example -- help revive adjacent downtown areas. That was the case with MCI Center, which aided the expansion of Washington's downtown to the east.

RFK, conversely, is surrounded by parking lots and residential neighborhoods, presenting less obvious potential for spinoff commercial growth.