Baltimore representatives who are trying to build support for a new downtown arena say they are encouraged by preliminary talks with National Basketball Association teams that might be enticed to move here.
"We've talked to a lot of teams. Some are interested, some are moderately interested, and each has a different time frame and set of needs," said Len Perna, managing director of the Goal Group, a Chicago-based sports consulting firm hired to search for tenants for the proposed arena.
"But we're just out of the gate and have not yet made it around the first turn," he said.
He declined to identify the teams Baltimore has approached. Other sources familiar with the effort said the prospects include the San Antonio Spurs, Sacramento Kings and Houston Rockets.
One of the teams has spent thousands of dollars over the past six months to study Baltimore as a sports market and to evaluate transportation routes into a new stadium near the 36-year-old Baltimore Arena.
City officials acknowledge that the teams might be flirting with Baltimore, using the city's desire for an NBA franchise as leverage to force their host cities to cough up money to build them better arenas.
The city faces formidable obstacles to luring a team: lack of money, opposition to additional public spending for sports, a market newly saturated with sports facilities and an influential NBA owner in Washington who is unlikely to support a competitor so near.
And some cities that already have arenas are seeking tenants.
"If you are shopping for a venue and you have the Baltimore-Washington market with a lot of luxury seating and Abe Pollin who is going to fight you tooth and nail, you've got to wonder if it's worth the time and effort," said John Moag, head of the sports industry group of Legg Mason. Moag is the former head of the Maryland Stadium Authority who lured the Ravens to Baltimore.
Attractive winter market
But Baltimore is the nation's largest city without one of the two major winter sports, the NBA and National Hockey League. And the city has made construction of an arena, which could cost $200 million, a priority, in part to support west side redevelopment plans.
"We are very excited about the prospect of getting a professional basketball team, and some have expressed interest," said Clinton Coleman, a spokesman for Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke.
Neither Coleman nor Charles Graves, the city's director of planning, would identify the targeted franchises.
Leo Gomez, vice president of public affairs for the Spurs, who have won a berth in the NBA finals, declined to confirm or deny the team's interest in relocation.
"Through the years we've always tried to explore our options," Gomez said. "But right now, we are focused on basketball."
The team plays in the Alamodome, a rambling multipurpose facility built in 1993 with football in mind. The team has said a new arena is a must if the Spurs are to stay in San Antonio.
Troy Hanson, a spokesman for the Kings, denied any talks with Baltimore or dissatisfaction with its team-owned venue, the Arco Arena, which opened in 1988.
"There's no truth to that at all," Hanson said of suggestions the team might relocate. "I think somebody is trying to throw things out there, and the Kings should not be included."
Angela Blakeney, manager of business communications for the Houston Rockets, said the team is unhappy with its arena but has limited its replacement efforts to the Houston area. The team has had no contact with Baltimore, she said.
Possible arena sites
Even if Baltimore fails to attract a basketball team, the city might build a 12,000-seat replacement for the Baltimore Arena, said Graves. The facility is the oldest indoor arena in the nation's 40 largest sports markets.
The most likely site for a new arena would be immediately north of the current one on Howard Street, he said. Other sites under consideration are on property owned by Allied Signal at the end of South Caroline Street at the Inner Harbor or south of PSINet Stadium.
Funding priorities
If the city succeeds in attracting an NBA team, it would hope to split the $200 million cost of a new arena between the team's owner, the state and the city -- with most of the money coming from the private sector.
"Our charge from the mayor has been that there needs to be significant contributions from the owner of the new arena and that there would be no impact on the city's general fund," Graves said.
Nicholas C. D'Adamo Jr., chairman of the city's budget and appropriations committee, said a budget deficit makes city contributions to the construction of a new stadium impossible.
"There is a zero chance of city funding," D'Adamo said.
City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III, a candidate for mayor, said that he would make building an arena for an NBA team a top priority if he were elected.
"It's a dream of mine," Bell said. "As mayor, I would like to push very hard for a new quality downtown arena and an NBA franchise. I think it would be an investment that would pay off for years to come and would help the next renaissance of Baltimore."
Another candidate for mayor, Carl Stokes, said he would look to Washington, where private funds were used to build an NBA arena.
Ray Feldmann, spokesman for Gov. Parris N. Glendening, who is out of the country on a trade mission, said it is unclear what the governor's position would be on state funding.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., a Prince George's County Democrat, said the city must first find a team and significant private money before it comes to the state for aid.
'Unique circumstances'
Funding for Camden Yards was approved in 1987 after the NFL Colts left town and while the Orioles were tacitly threatening to do the same.
"It was a unique set of circumstances, and I don't know if those circumstances would ever be repeated," Miller said.
Robert Leffler, owner of the Leffler Agency, a marketing firm with a number of sports clients, said: "It is a market with no major-league winter sports. If you're the first one to the market, you might keep hockey out. But there's an NBA team 40 miles away and an NHL team 40 miles away."
Moag said that even if funding could be found, a team that played in the small and outmoded Baltimore Arena while its new home is constructed would forfeit millions in revenue during the wait.
One of the teams Baltimore is eyeing has suggested that it might be willing to use the old arena until a developer builds a 19,000-seat facility, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
But several cities have new arenas that could be used by an NBA team, Moag said. Among them are St. Louis; Tampa, Fla.; Anaheim, Calif.; and Memphis and Nashville, Tenn. St. Louis and Anaheim have had contact with the Spurs, according to one source.
Filling luxury seats
Another issue is whether Baltimore's corporate base would buy the skyboxes and club seats that drive sports franchise economics.
"The luxury market here is probably saturated," Moag said. "Could you put bodies in the seats? Probably. Could you put corporations in the luxury seats? No."
After construction of two new stadiums and one arena in the past three years, the Baltimore-Washington region with its 6.7 million residents has more than 30,000 club seats and 550 suites. That is the highest concentration of luxury seating in the nation, equal to roughly one skybox for every 12,000 people and one club seat for every 200.
Officials for the Wizards, who, as the Bullets, played in Baltimore until 1973, declined to comment.
NBA rules prevent a team from moving without the approval of three-quarters of the other teams, said NBA spokeswoman Teri Washington.
Whether the league could stop a determined owner from moving, however, is an open question. Courts have ruled that sports leagues can block the relocation of their franchises for legal business reasons -- not simply to keep one team from providing unwanted competition to another.
Pollin could do little officially to stop a move and would risk drawing an antitrust suit if he tried, said Jan Stiglitz, a sports law expert at California Western School of Law in San Diego.
Sun staff writer Milton Kent contributed to this article.
Pub Date: 6/09/99