Why Not Root for an Outrageously Ambitious Plan?

For all sane people, there's only one proper reaction to the passing into history of another Super Bowl: Just a few more weeks until spring training!

Yes, baseball fans, the long wait till next year is almost over. Except in Richmond. Virginia's capital city will be without professional baseball for the first time in 44 years. We've parsed endlessly the reasons why. So let's look to the future.

Like the Baltimore Orioles, Richmond faces a rebuilding phase filled with holes, plagued by financial uncertainty, and vexed by questions about the ownership. Still, hope endures, in part because we know some good people are working hard to put runners on base.

The real estate professionals at Highwoods Properties -- the city's official stadium developer -- and their partners have, God bless 'em, pulled together a very reasonable, pragmatic, sensitive, attractive, largely self-funding, even downright exciting plan to transform a bleak collection of flood-prone Shockoe Bottom parking lots into a cozy ballpark surrounded by restaurants, stores, offices, hotel rooms, and condominiums.

They promise to rejuvenate land that is otherwise largely unsuited to development, pay proper respect to the nearby site of Lumpkin's Slave Jail, keep the lights aimed low so as to not bother the folks in Church Hill, and pay for it all with revenue generated by the ballpark and adjacent new structures and businesses.

The plan looks wonderful on paper. Handsome brick buildings meld seamlessly with the Bottom's 19th-century commercial architecture and link Main Street Station and the 17th Street Farmers' Market with more lively blocks to the east. Best of all, a green-grass baseball diamond -- tucked below the concourse that surrounds it -- would replace the crumbling asphalt covering much of the land today. It sure would be great to see this ballpark built.

THE DEVELOPERS have pulled together some very attractive charts, too, that explain how they'll pay for what's billed as a $364 million initial phase, including $70.5 million for the ballpark. The developers will raise money from the private sector for everything outside the stadium, though they expect the city to spend $8 million on infrastructure improvements (and $45 million on a GRTC station that's really a separate matter, financially speaking.)

They intend to pay for the stadium -- which would be owned by a city-chartered sports authority -- by selling bonds to the public. They'll pay back the money over 30 years using tax revenue from the ballpark and the new development around it, as well as stadium rent and leasing. But about 90 percent of the annual cash flow, estimated at nearly $9 million a year, would be generated by state and local taxes raised from consumers buying stuff in and around the ballpark and from people owning and running businesses and condominiums there.

The developers estimate the $9 million in revenue will comfortably cover the annual debt service -- interest and principal -- of about $5.4 million. The projections anticipate the bonds will pay a 6.5 percent interest rate, an optimistic assumption at the moment. And -- this is crucial -- bond payments will come only from revenue created by the project. Should those funds fall short, bond holders would not be able to raid the city's general tax base for relief.

The state and city would forgo significant taxes raised by the project. The developers offer the compelling, though not bullet-proof, argument that the government loses nothing because if the ballpark complex isn't built, the land will produce very little revenue anyway -- and that the stadium would inject economic vitality into Shockoe Bottom, which will boost area businesses, increasing the amount of taxes the state and city collects from them.

So far, so good.

UNFORTUNATELY, A COUPLE of gray clouds threaten a rain delay. The bond market is a huge thunder clapper, as is the soggy history of Richmond's downtown retail industry. And out along the horizon, worries rumble about overly optimistic predictions for restaurant-related tax revenue.

At the moment, as we all know, credit markets aren't working well. Perhaps they will be a year from now. But investors are going to be skittish about risk for a long while. So one of the ballpark financing plan's great attributes -- that it does not create a general obligation for city taxpayers -- also makes it less attractive to bond investors. Selling the project to the markets will be a significant challenge.

For the plan to work, the project will need to attract a good number of stores and restaurants. Retail in downtown Richmond is a risky proposition, as the Sixth Street Marketplace and other failures painfully illustrated. There are scattered bright spots downtown -- particularly among specialty stores not too far from the proposed stadium. Still, the prospect of shoppers flocking to Shockoe Bottom year-round can be accurately described as speculative. The expectation that restaurants surrounding the stadium will produce $60 million or so in annual revenue is also, to put it charitably, highly ambitious.

This is not to suggest that Richmond should abandon the proposed stadium. Quite the contrary. For now, moving forward is relatively cheap. The General Assembly and the City Council should pass legislation that would enable the project to use new tax revenue to pay for the ballpark.

Conditions in credit markets and the general economy will eventually revive, though no one has any idea when. And perhaps the Shockoe Bottom project will succeed -- despite past precedents that suggest otherwise -- in weaving a magical combination of baseball, fine and fun dining, urban living, offices with a view, and city shopping. Richmond has long needed that elusive destination for luring people into the old and improved downtown.

The Shockoe Bottom ballpark may be a Hail Mary pass -- to borrow from a less pastoral sport -- but for now, I'm rooting for the home team. I've always had a weakness for underdogs.

Contact Bob Rayner at (804) 649-6073 or .