The mother of all live chats -- let's talk about the stadium, 11:30 -- 1:30 p.m. Tuesday

Without question, the dominant topic here on TroxBlog these days is the proposed baseball stadium on St. Petersburg's waterfront -- if you doubt it, just check out the comments to almost every stadium-related baseball post.

So, let's get together here for a special-edition, two-hour live chat on Tuesday from 11:30 a.m. -- 1:30 p.m. I'll be here in person, taking comments and questions about all matters related to the stadium proposal, financial, environmental, aesthetic. I don't claim to have all or even most of the answers, but I promise to do my best, and to be the fairest moderator I can, while confessing my own prejudices at every step.

To observe or take part in Tuesday's chat, come to TroxBlog at or after 11:30 a.m. and look for a new blog post with the headline, "The April 22 chat is OPEN!" Click on the "Comments" link and you'll see a page with everything that's been said so far, and a box for you to enter your own question or comment. You're welcome to take part, or just to hang out and see what people are saying.

If you'd like to "pre-file" a question or comment that I can work up a little advance material on, feel free to add it to the comments link of this post just a few lines below.

Lastly, a personal request, if you will indulge me -- some of the comments on this issue have gotten pretty emotional and sometimes insulting, and I'm not interested in a Jerry Springer-style knockdown. Let's get together in the spirit of inquiry, and of honest disagreement and agreement. (In other words, anybody who calls anybody else a $#$% is gonna get blipped by me.) (Insert beatific smile icon here.)

Comments

[Justin Elza]

Howard, I'd like to pre-file a question for you:

If you had to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how favorable your impression of the stadium proposal is at this point in time, 1 being very unfavorable and 10 being very favorable, what would your rating be?

[justme]

The other day in the paper it mentioned the Rays were going to ask the entire county to help fund the new stadium, it got me to thinking..
1. They are really pushing it now..
2. Hmm is this there way to tick many of the residents of Pinellas County off to the point where many say.. "to hell with it"?
or..
3. We vote it down and they move the team?

So many thoughts on this.. just curious as to what your feeling are on the new announcement ?

[guy]

Something said to me ~~ "Go to the computer" "Go to the Computer".
Guy ask'e humbly, to Howard our leader,
"Take a Poll Today on the stadium" you will have almost 75 views.
I vote "NO"

[Justin Elza]

I vote NO.

LOL Guy.. you crack me up.. I think the same lil birdy told me to "go to the computer" too..
I just think the way the economy is right now I too would vote "NO".

But then I also have a problem with my tax dollars having to pay for professional sports when I feel it should all be done via private enterprise.

[Larry]

No.

[Justin Elza]

Howard, check out the new diagram on the POWW site, which shows just how big the new stadium would be:

http://www.stpetepoww.com

[Elaina]

Sure. Vote no. Watch the team leave the little city and go elsewhere. Watch as your taxes continue to rise and businesses/conventions stay away because of the stigma of being a loser city. What a bunch of idiots. St. Pete does not deserve to have a team. You could have had Tampa International Airport. Too much whining. You could have had the Bucs there. Too much whining. St. Pete could have so much more-be so much more- yet you whine and complain. Then wonder why you are not taken seriously.

[Justin Elza]

I know, dang it, I just wish we were more like Tampa!

[guy]

So Elaina must be under 21

[Larry]

I'd say Elaina must be over 21 because she's been smoking something!!

Howard, don't forget to mention that it's Earth Day tomorrow....I am usually unable to participate in your chat as I must work...but to me, Earth Day and it's celebration still means something. A reminder to steward our planet the very best we can...and to be very careful of decisions made that oft times create irreversible
damage after completion. This is a part of the stadium discussion like it or not......so I hope, though you've been reluctant, you might consider starting to address some of those points. Because the Fish and Wildlife Commission know that issues are there regarding dredging and filling the bay, as evidenced by the Agency on Bay Management letter to City Council....pronounced by their lead scientist at the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, housed right here in St. Petersburg close to the waterfront.
And heck it's also my birthday.....I was green by design and birthright, I guess.......I'll try to peek in if possible.

Lorraine

[Marie]

You already are part of us - part of Tampa - you just do not know it yet. Keep going and eventually you will be Tampa West. You are slowly losing your identity. Soon - no postmark, no team, nothing to show you are anything special. You are nothing. Your grandchildren will look at you confused when you mention "St. Petersburg" because they will not have heard of it.

[Peter]

Justin, what a schill for POWW you are. Thanks though, for pointing out how much smaller the new ballpark will be. The mast is much slimmer than the BOA building, and the rest is WAY smaller than the Trop. Would be a beautiful addition to the waterfront and bring more people there to enjoy it. It's empty most of the time now because its boring.

[Lorraine]

To continue my thoughts on earth day, the Rays new ballpark, with its LEED certification and other impressive green building techniques, certainly exemplifies the goals of environmental stewardship that we should all strive for and be reminded of on Earth Day.

[Howard Troxler]

Lorraine, thanks for pointing out the design features of the stadium. Supposedly the "carbon footprint," to use the buzz phrase, would be considerably smaller than Tropicana Field. The stadium also would deal with storing and treating stormwater runoff (a major threat to the bay) on-site.

The tradeoff in this subject area is the dredging and filling required to make it work (<= 1 acre), the extent to which it disturbs habitat, and the extent to which the work itself would be disruptive...

[Chris]

If the Lorraine at 3:46 is really the Lorraine we've all come to know and love - I'll eat my hat. I find it unbelievable that Lorraine M. has swallowed Kalt's Kool-Aid.

It's a straw hat, and certainly consumable. I'm uncertain of its nutrition status, but am sure that it will provide much needed dietary fiber.

[guy]

Dear Lorraine M.
Renouned Bycyclist.
What effect do you the the "Sail" will have on the hundreds of seagulls that now use Al Lang field as their afternoon poop ground??
This is a real green grass issue.

[Lorraine]

Presumably the Rays would not appreciate seagulls pooping on their new field, so they will find away to keep them out of the area, probably through some type of sonic device.

[get-smart]

Lets face it, they will need a couple of acres of bay. We are just being sandbagged until the project starts. We will then start seeing all the miscalculations and engineering mistakes and of course, the cost over runs. What about all the sub-sonic noises emanating from the speaker system played by the MC's to excite the fans. With all its sirens, whistles and sub-sonic thumping audio sounds, the stadium will be a virtual Mega Mega Mega Boom Box. Sound does travel underwater, you know. It will also be the end of having a nice quiet stroll about town. My doctor said I should focus on the positive. So here's the positive: I'm sure the fish and crabs will get used to the sound after awhile. Happy Earth Day

[Jon McPhee]

In this space, there is no agreement on what makes up the foundations of a community.

Some of us think it is found in large structures and big projects and "progress," which often involves a lot of public costs.

We sometimes forget that beyond plain old tax dollars that often get “invested” in these gargantua along with free passes around urban planning and environmental rules and public review and approval, there’s the need for publicly-funded services and infrastructure like added police and fire and street-cleaning and sewers and water lines and water itself. In the present economic climate and state of our aquifer and community pocketbook, these are going to be in shorter and more expensive supply.

Big structures are eye candy to some, and eyesores to many. Many of us think that quiet neighborhoods, free from street fights and random gunfire, trees and parks and open space, uncluttered waterfronts, decent schools and health care and activities that distract young people away from foolish or deadly behaviors, safe places to worship as we please, and traffic flows instead of traffic jams, are at least as valuable as "vibrant" but fading confections like Ybor City, BayWalk, and skyline-crushing office and residential and now sports towers. We sense that, as with a cancer, there is a limit to growth, at the very outside at the point where the civic body dies, but hopefully well short of that.

"Development" is exciting and enticing. It promises "things happening," which often translates to chances for a few to make a whole lot of money and leave a big mark on the community. We are hit up every day with advertising that promises happiness from "New, Improved, Deluxe, Exclusive" widgets or spa treatments or what have you, to the point that most of us now salivate whenever that bell gets rung. But research tells us pretty clearly that happiness is hard to find among the success stories in our culture, and that the most contented people on Earth live in Denmark, where most of what happens is pretty quiet and involves family, faith, economic security, open-ended educational opportunities and (gasp!) national health care.

I know, the Bay Area and Florida are no Denmark. But we do still live under the forms of democracy, if not so much of the substance any more. It’s said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance against enemies foreign and domestic. When large projects are pushed forward by people with only profit in their sights, in only partial view of the political and regulatory apparatus of government and the general public, while little tentacles of the whole beast are slowly insinuated into the public consciousness until the whole thing is finally visible but now somehow familiar and voila! suddenly recognized as an accomplished fact, that is not democracy.

[Captain Jack]

I keep my boat right there and have to fish early in the morning.
It is peaceful now. are you saying that the evenings are going to get noisy on the waterfront get-smart?

Lorraine at 3:46 and 5:22 is not ME,
Lorraine M. I find it increasingly cumbersome to view the tactics and lack of ethics that continues on all of the blogs lately. If there can be no monitoring of these sites, via email address confirmation and abuse controls, what is the point of posting?

Howard, you can check my email address for verification.........I hope that you can check others who POSE as me, and I've seen this done already with other folks. If you can not control the level of the posters honesty and info, why should we post??

With Letters to the Editors, you must submit your name, address and phone number....perhaps that should be required as well on Times blog posting registration...not for dissemination, but for YOUR sanity??
LEED ceritification is a joke....bare minimum baloney to GET THE PASS....to destroy.

Lorraine M.......the real one.

[Don Mott]

Howard, One pre-file question. Do you have any feeling for which way the County Commissioners are leaning toward the new revelations that the Rays will be asking them for more money? They have been quiet up to now since of course they haven't previously been consulted.

[Don Mott]

Hi Lorraine, it is unfortunate that sometimes one can post comments using your name. It happened to me recently on the Buzz Blog and it is very frustrating. I don't know what controls can be installed but the erroneous posts should be removed when it becomes obvious the post is a fake.

[guy]

Hi Lorraine,
I knew that you, like me, would have down on the side of the birds.
This same jerk posed as me last week. some people can't think for themselves.
Funny how everyone spotted the phoney right away.
You are getting famous LOL

[get-smart]

Well Captain Jack, I think you might want to consider moving. Construction is going to take three years and the noise and dust will be there from sunrise to sunset. They will be dredging, banging in pylons and building a new seawall. However, if you can get through the construction phase, the stadium noise might not be so bad.

Gentelmen, thanks for your kind support and words.....all that comes to mind is........

http://www.imeem.com/people/6aDgFU//music/B7rKQEl-/anselm_douglas_who_let_the_dogs_out/

Well..I'm taken' a shot just once...Howard forgive me. At least I'm
brave enough to say it's me.

Louie, I love dogs, BTW......this is simply a metaphor....

The REAL Lorraine M.

[Jon McPhee]

My work hours are such that I always miss the chat, darn it. But I would like to have a say on Tuesdays, so here goes. If you don't want to read it because it's long and complicated, wait till you try to figure out and keep in mind all the slowly revealed pieces of this Big Deal.

Some folks have suggested that the whole country is not presently sacrificing enough to support the Iraq war. The Administration is borrowing Big Time against the future to fund the extravaganza. Lockheed and Boeing and Raytheon and Halliburton aren't sacrificing anything, they’re just gulping the borrowed money like bottomless pigs. About 70 percent of the public wants the war ended. No way, of course, now that it’s started, which is exactly what the folks who profit from it knew when they pushed to get it going.

Bring that down to present scale. Who is going to sacrifice to trash the Trop and put up the SailAway stadium? The Tampa Bay Rays, Inc., its officers, directors and shareholders are, on careful examination, risking and contributing pretty much nothing for the project, other than a constantly growing "vision," which to me at least looks more like a cancer, the way it will eat away at the organs of our City. The residents of the City, and now Pinellas County (together known by Big League Baseball as a "small market"), and pretty soon the region and state, will be tractor-beamed into giving cash or borrowed money we don't have to build a White Elephant of a supposedly "world-class" stadium for some carpetbaggers from New York. They plan to freeload on this community in a big way. For that matter, I would bet that the large majority of people in the area, if eventually informed of all the effects on their future that this deal will cause, would vote it down in a heartbeat. So the rest of the public, those who would have us all buy the SailAway at all of our expense, are freeloading too.

I don’t care how slick the lawyers and experts the City might hire, at additional great expense, to pore over all the complex pieces of this “deal” might be. The back-door outs and ins installed by the Rays’ better attorneys will slip under the radar with ease. The bonds that will fund the City and (surprise!) the County’s share, given the area’s current bond rating, are going to cost a ton of interest, decades into the future, since we don’t have enough cash on hand to buy the Rays a playground outright. Even though already overburdened public services will be stretched even thinner to serve the White Whale on the Waterfront, we are still somewhat dazzled by the big-city pixie dust that Mr. Kalt, the professional stadium building shill, is blowing at us as he sneaks around trying to assemble a coalition of potential veto holders to buy into this Great Deal.

If the Rays want a new stadium, don't mortgage the future of this City to give them some "world-class" White Elephant. If you want to give them something, give them Toytown Landfill, a large, ideal site, and let them put up the money out of their own large pockets, or borrow the money to build from investors who are smart enough to protect their own interests and rich enough to swallow a loss if the project goes belly-up.

A former mayor of Philadelphia is recently reported to have said, not altogether accurately, that "cities … will build [team owners] a stadium, and they will build it for free. It is what it is." And City Council Chair Bennett sighed Friday with relief at the latest revelation that the Rays have long been silently planning on County megabucks to "make the deal work," so that only half the public money would appear to come from the City levies. I’m sure the rest of the equally fiscally-strapped county is equally delighted. But wait! There’s more! Do I mistake, or do County levies also apply to St. Petersburg residents? What will next week's revelation be? That the Girl Scouts have to contribute their earnings from cookie sales to "make the deal work?"

Why does this whole scene remind me of Charlie Brown's infinite willingness to be suckered by Lucy Van Pelt into "kicking off the first football of the season" every single year, always ending up, "AAAUUGGH!," flat on his back with the wind knocked out of him? It annoys me to no end that former City leaders who sucked the community down into so many other boondoggle projects get to walk away laughing, especially as they see the public getting hoodwinked yet again by the guy with the sharkskin suit and the slick patter, flipping the Three-Card-Monte cards around on the little card table he borrowed from the fellow getting hoodwinked in the first place.

Of course, we usually forget the old saw about "Fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me." Until the hook is set, we’re reeled in, and laid out gasping on the shore.

To those of you voters who want the stadium, how much will YOU be willing to put into the kitty out of your own private assets, without even a share of stock in the team to show for it? Will you pick up the now and future shares of all the other people who have no use for a new stadium, are still paying for the old one, and are already drowning in trying to live on the pay of a teacher, a fireman, a nurse, a policeman, anywhere in their native spots in Pinellas County?

I hear the answer. Now, that's what is called "freeloading."

[Jon McPhee]

And Howard, if that's too much like a column for the back-and-forth format of a chat, you know where the blip button is.

[Steve Lange]

First, folks who blog as others are cowards, cheats and fakes. Sort of sums up their life. Howard you need to weed these rats out of your blog.

Now on to real issues. As an architect I can tell you that Leed's Certification is pushed by companies trying to profit from selling their products. Sometimes these products are average and OK and other times they are a flim flam.

Let's take the Rays pushing Leed's Certification for their proposed waterfront stadium.

The Rays and their architects are attempting to hold up Leed's like some Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval like that is all they have to do to justify their project. When in reality this is what is going to occur if the Rays win this stadium confrontation with the public.

If you add up all of the energy (that is afterall the common denominator) that was used to construct Al Lang and Tropicana Field and then add to this all of the energy to demolish both of these structures and haul away the debris to a landfill which takes up valuable land (which is energy in the form of dollars to purchase the land), and throw in for good measure, the energy to place and treat this debris including the energy to demolish and clear the land fill and prepare it for debris you will arrive at a number which is VERY large.

Then you add in the energy to construct this second (waterfront) stadium and add it to all of the points made above for Al Lang and the Trop, etc. you now get an even BIGGER number.

Now take and determine the energy savings from the Leed's certification for the proposed waterfront stadium and you will get a very small number in comparison.

Thus, in general it will probably take two hundred or more years to recapture with the Leed's savings to undo all of the energy expenditures to build all three stadiums, etc. in the first place.

But, the Rays are not telling us this.

In other words Leed's in this case is a lost leader. It's a sham. End of story. And the Ray's know it.

[Chris Jenkins]

Jon, Steve, Justin, and sort of Lorraine...

Good for all of you for being willing to stand up for this cause under your real names, while being attacked by those who wear a mask of anonymity. The integrity in your position shines through when you put your face behind it, even when not required to.

I've seen the attacks against us become more vitriolic, even as we become more civil, more oriented on facts and reality, and less distracted by the red herrings tossed out in the form of assumptive straw men and ad hominem attacks. Good for all of you, and for everyone else participating around here who seems to get exactly what is being put forth here. It encourages me to see it from all of you.

Howard, here's my prefile, although I'll be doing my best to attend today:

Despite what seems to at least some of us seems a fairly clear cut argument somewhere in the "Hell no!" range of thinking against stadium deal, you've maintained a sort of neutrality. You are not particularly known for your neutrality on issues where it seems the public is getting screwed. I'd venture to say that some of your more spirited anti-corruption rants are a major part of the reason many of us have become fans to begin with (although you accessibility to your readers is remarkable, and we appreciate it greatly).

Since you have remained on the fence, I would like a point by point answer from you on what keeps you there; what benefits do you think are realistically possible, assuming that in some Quixotic reality (by which I mean impossible dream) the taxpayers were able to stay off the hooks for this thing? I think for you to remain on the fence the way you have, you either have external editorial pressure not to pick a side in the argument, or you legitimately feel like a good deal is actually a possibility. If the latter is true, I'd just like to understand why you think it is a possibility.

[Lee]

Howard, if this stadium fails to pass, do we have any idea how much more another stadium will cost in another five or ten years when the Rays propose it again?

[Hammer]

The whole thing is an election year ruse. That’s why so many local politicians who should be commenting, aren’t. When all the ridiculous plans have been laid out, and as we get closer to the Elections, you will see and hear the incumbents proclaiming “Our citizens said NO, and we listened to them… so re-elect us or the terrorists will attack Pinellas.”

Then, if we’re dumb enough to fall for that and put them all back in… the will do it anyway. I say by… oh, about mid 2010.

Scrounging pennies for Pinellas does NOT make this proposal palatable.
Desperatly needed penney funds for advertising in a down economy,beach renourishment, and road improvement will be diverted.Dads wallet was empty so the penny jar looked enticing.
Redevelop tropicana with a new stadium and as an homage to 100 yrs of baseball create Progress ENERGY Park at AL Lang utilizing wind turbines to replace field lights, solar panels at the "fence" etc.. and create a proud civic gathering spot for ALL on the waterfront while creating conventional jobs at tropicana and "new" green tech jobs at Al Lang

No Hammer. The Rays want it on the ballot this year for the presidential elections. They figure that there will be more voters to vote Yes. An off year election will bring out the neighborhood No vote only. Why would you get off your couch to vote Yes?

[Steve]

Lee: Make no mistake about it. If Council sends this forward to a referendum vote, I and others will work towards defeating the stadium proposal to protect our City finances and to protect our waterfront parkland. The Ray's stadium proposal will be defeated if a vote is held. Then some of us will morph into another group, if necessary, to stop this lunacy, this constant series of attacks on our waterfront parkland once and for all. We will put forth an effort, the likes of which this City has never seen before. The public eruption caused by the City Council back in the eighties will be nothing to what is about to happen this time. Last time we changed the City Charter by deleting the words "capital improvements" from two paragraphs thus giving the citizens of this great City the right to initiative and referendum in regard to expensive capital improvement projects, like the one before us today. We did that. That group was called Choice and I was a founding member. Also changed back then was the form of government from city manager to strong mayor. We also saw to it that two of the city council members who were up for re-election were in fact not re-elected. The hammer fell hard back then. But that will look like simple finger strumming compared to what is in store this time. Enough is enough.