Dulles site offered for park

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NEW YORK -- The Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority is attempting a late rally on its long troubled ballpark site situation, focusing efforts on a tract of land near Dulles International Airport.

Industry sources said executive director Gabe Paul Jr. wrote a letter this week to all 30 major league clubs saying the authority has a completed financing plan for a site near the intersection of Route28 and the Dulles Toll Road.

Paul was not available for comment last night, and authority spokesman Brian Hannigan declined to comment on any communication with Major League Baseball's relocation committee or the details of a new proposal. But both Hannigan and Jerry Burkot, spokesman for a prospective ownership group led by William Collins III, said interest in the Dulles area is quite high.

"The Dulles site identified remains a prime location for a ballpark," Hannigan said.

Burkot also said Paul's letter had been in the works for "some time."

"I knew [the letter] was happening. It's obviously important to keep everyone within baseball up to date to with what we're doing, keep up the lines of communication," Burkot said.

The location is one of five identified last year by the authority as site candidates. But privately, Virginia baseball boosters had considered it more of a fallback as efforts focused on locations in Pentagon City. Those Arlington efforts, however, proved futile as government and community opposition mounted, pushing the authority's stadium efforts back outside the Beltway.

"We never took Dulles off the table," Burkot said. "It was always on our radar."

The Associated Press reported last night that the Dulles site would be developed in conjunction with Marriott Corp. The authority has spent the last several months seeking private developers to join its ballpark efforts so as to eliminate any need for front-end capital from an incoming team owner.

Meanwhile, MLB's relocation committee yesterday met for 21/2 hours at league offices here, sifting through reams of revised stadium proposals presented by each of the six candidates for the Montreal Expos: the District, Northern Virginia, Norfolk, Portland, Ore., Las Vegas and Monterrey, Mexico.