Dulles site offered for park

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.

Two primary pieces of information resulted from that session. First, the data collecting portion of the committee’s 18-month search process is now over, and the full panel will present its findings to commissioner Bud Selig within the next month. All six candidates will be discussed, and no rank ordering will be done. But favorites of some sort are sure to emerge, and Selig then will lay out further direction.

It remains baseball’s intention to announce the new home of the MLB-owned Expos by midsummer and move the club in time for Opening Day 2005.

Second, baseball is no longer mandating that jurisdictions produce fully financed stadium financing in advance of MLB choosing a relocation destination.

The new stance is a significant change for baseball, which for more than two years has insisted cities produce ratified stadium legislation so as to avoid ballpark troubles that now plague teams such as Oakland and Minnesota.

But with less than 90 days remaining before baseball intends to make its choice on the Expos’ new home, none of the six jurisdictions have met the standard.

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