D.C. not only contender to be Expos' new home

Special Report: Yes, Las Vegas is a gamble and Mexico is a poor choice fiscally speaking, but...

By Ed Waldman and Ryan Young | Sun Staff

June 14, 2004

If Peter Angelos gets his wish and Major League Baseball doesn't relocate the Montreal Expos to the Washington area, the team will have to play somewhere next season.

MLB has emphatically said the Expos will have a new permanent home for 2005. Of course, officials said the same thing last year and two years ago.

When Bob DuPuy, baseball's president and chief operating officer and the head of the relocation committee, was asked last month if he was confident that the decision would be made this year, he first laughed.

"I was confident it would be done last year," he said.

DuPuy's committee is readying a report that analyzes the contenders and will soon be presented to commissioner Bud Selig.

Selig's decision, which would need to be approved by three-fourths of the owners, should come sometime around the All-Star Game on July 13.

Besides Washington and Northern Virginia, the contenders for the Expos are Norfolk, Va.; Las Vegas; Portland, Ore.; Monterrey, Mexico; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. This year, for the second season in a row, the Expos are playing 22 "home" games at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan.

Though the Norfolk area is close enough to Baltimore that some cable television subscribers in the area get Orioles games, club owner Angelos said he is not opposed to a team there.

Here is a look at the contenders outside the region:

Norfolk, Va.

William Somerindyke Jr., the CEO of Norfolk Baseball Co., who is fronting the Hampton Roads bid, said last week he has received deposits for 65 luxury suites and 5,000 season tickets since the beginning of a drive that started late last month.

Somerindyke is fighting to show that, despite having a metro area population of just 1.65 million, the area could support a major league team.

He is quick to point out that, if you include the area from Hampton Roads to Richmond (90 miles away), the population is a little less than 3 million.

Somerindyke also said his bid "has one of the most attractive stadium packages in the country."

A $300 million, 38,000-seat stadium along the Elizabeth River in downtown Norfolk would be paid for by bonds financed mostly by taxes on hotel rooms and rental cars, he said.

Somerindyke also touts the large Navy presence in Norfolk as a "huge advantage."

"People say it's low median income, but a lot of people don't realize it's high discretionary income," he said.

Las Vegas

Despite the fact that there are only 1.7 million people in the metropolitan area, Las Vegas is the fastest-growing city in the country and one of the top vacation destinations. It can build a $550 million stadium close to the Strip with private money. A Major League Baseball team would have the pro sports market all to itself.

There's just one little issue: gambling.