Let’s revisit the issue of where the ball park is being built.
We have been told that the Pacific Coast League (PCL) insisted that the ball park be downtown. I personally doubt the truth of that.
I don’t recall Mountainstar or any of it’s principals saying that it must be downtown. If someone has evidence to the contrary I would like to see it.
We know that certain city officials insisted that downtown was the only place the ball park could be built.
Inconvenient fact
It appears that seven PCL stadiums have been built in the 21st century. Looking at the ones opened in the last ten years we have:
Werner Park opened in 2011 and is less than three miles west of Papillion Nebraska. Unless Nebraska has their downtowns in corn fields the PCL obviously did not require this park to be downtown. It seats about 9,000 and cost $36 million. I can’t find anything about them tearing down anything to build the park or spending 17 million dollars because they mismanaged the financing.
Aces Ballpark opened in 2009 and is in downtown Reno. It cost $50 million and seats 9,100.
Isotopes Park is in Albuquerque and opened in 2003. The citizens got to vote. Their choice was to build a brand new park downtown or rebuild an old stadium. They chose to rebuild the old stadium for $25 million. Once again the PCL did not insist that the facility be downtown. Their seating capacity is about 13,000.
Our 50 million dollar ball park now will cost at least $61 million. The park needs to be financed. It could have been financed for $17 million less if our city financial people had done better. That puts us at $78 million and counting.
Let’s see–$36 million for Werner, $50 million for Aces, $25 million for Isotopes, and at least $78 million for our mismanaged mess.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
What we have to deal with is that we don’t know who can be trusted among our city “leaders.” So many lies have been told, and so many people still at the helm have been involved in perpetuating, justifying, and colluding on those definite, blatant lies that too many apples are rotten now…even, maybe, some good and well intentioned individuals, and that is very, very disturbing. The ballpark and all its proponents…no matter how many millions are spent … will forever emit a putrid stench.
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Well said mamboman!
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I’ll admit that the word was that it had to be downtown or nowhere at all. That, of course, was attributed to the Pacific Coast league. However, I’m looking for where someone from MountainStar specifically put it on the PCL. MountainStar said from the beginning that they themselves wouldn’t do the deal unless baseball was downtown. I know they said that because they said that many times in public.
I also know that the PCL via the MLB has certain standards for the field. There were a lot of “it must have this” and “it must have that” stipulations that were PCL originated.
I wonder if the attribution of the downtown requirement got mixed up and never corrected.
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Right off the bat (pardon the pun) found a 2012 radio interview with Josh Hunt. Made it clear a new downtown stadium was needed to ensure approval from the league to get a team in El Paso. Ortega had an interview the same day and said the same thing. DK, I know its hard to find these things when you still using Netscape or AOL. There’s this new thing called Google. Try it; you might find several other archived interviews from MountainStar putting it on the PCL.
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Austin / Round Rock’s stadium is not downtown.
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Branch Rickey III, AAA president, told one of the owners of the Reno AAA club (who was a former Diablo official), that Cohen Stadium was a suitable location if El Paso spent about $15 million to bring the ballpark up to AAA standards. Why weren’t we told that by Mountainstar owners? We all know why. Follow the money. They own real estate downtown that they want to lease out, develop, etc. Yes, Paul Foster’s new restaurant was reviewed in last Sunday’s El Paso Times. Construction on that restaurant began when the downtown ballpark location was a done deal. Yes, the Mountainstar folks are the ones that insisted on a downtown location, not AAA baseball. I would love to trade the $15 million bill for the $78 million plus the loss of our City Hall Building and Insights Museum at many millions more. The Fosters and Hunts have done a lot for El Paso in the past, but they have really screwed El Pasoans to the wall to line their own pockets with more greenbacks. For this greedy deed, I will never forgive them!
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Mountainstar and City Management both said that PCL “preferred” downtown ballparks, which just goes to show that they worked closely to coordinate their talking points and rationalizations.
They led the public to believe that the PCL might not approve the sale of the team to Mountainstar unless the ballpark was downtown. Check the city presentation below and the Josh Hunt interview in El Paso Inc.
Click to access FACT_SHEET-Ballpark.pdf
Truth is that Mountainstar and City Management worked together to build a case against using Cohen. Cohen was never truly looked at as an option; they started with their desire to build downtown and then worked backward to justify why they did not use Cohen, knowing there would be opposition to destroying city hall.
If this were truly about baseball, they would have improved Cohen or built a new stadium on that site. Given the explosive growth on the east side, Cohen is a much more central location, easier to get to and easier to get in and out of than the downtown site. But this isn’t about baseball. We all know that.
I would have been less peeved about all of this if Foster and Hunt had just been more honest about their personal financial motivations instead of acting like they were doing this for the community. City Management and Council would have had more credibility if they had simply admitted that they were doing what the Foster and Hunt wanted.
Why can’t people just be honest?
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Amen!
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What more can I say about this nightmarish lunacy stadium debacle that I already haven’t typed-out on at least 3 other blogs, during at least the past 1.5 years? In fact, it’s almost laughable that some idiot/loser on another blog has now flip-flopped and flipped on this one issue. So now you’re all asking me, ‘So what’s the solution, big boy?’ Economically, there is no solution. During he next couple of years, we WILL have higher taxes/fees and and an even larger debt. With all of the brain-dead nonsense that’s been going on in this town, a person would have to be insane to start a business here. The “answer” is a moral one- ‘throw the bums out.’ When I think of our Manager, CFO, Mayor, and even all of CC, the words that come to mind to describe them are incompetent, stumbling, whiny, and intellectual emptiness. Believe me, no one hates simple-minded, bumper sticker cliches’ more than I do, but what else is there?
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foster demanded it be downtown. been saying that forever. PCL preferred it downtown, but they prefer many things that dont happen. albuquerque mayor had their old stadium remodeled and has a better contract with the isotopes than our worthless city manager made for us. their mayor got more money and didnt have to tear down a city hall and isnt paid 230k a year. maybe leeser should hire him to replace wilson.
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absolutely correct on every point
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2013/09/17/dwindling-crowds-puzzling-for-contending-athletics-indians-rays/2829543/
If teams who are making the playoffs can’t get people in the stands because of a poor economy, then El Paso is going to have a hard time. Hell, Oakland is having to give tickets away at $2 a piece to get people to show up.
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