Although the Triple A Charlotte Knights have yet to
make a formal proposal to the city, the team appears "to be
leaning toward building a minor-league stadium" near
downtown Charlotte "that wouldn't be expandable if the city
were to get" an MLB team, according to Tim Whitmire of the
CHARLOTTE OBSERVER. The Knights, who currently play in Fort
Mill, SC, would look to open the ballpark by 2004 when their
lease at Knights Castle expires. City Council member Lynn
Wheeler said that she thinks the city "can afford to finance
up to" $20M of a projected $40M ballpark using an annual
hotel-motel tax. Wheeler, who has been working with both
the Knights and the Hornets on public funding for proposed
new facilities: "I think it's doable and I'm hopeful, but
until we get particulars from the Knights in a formal
proposal, there's no way to know." So far, Wheeler and
other city leaders "have met twice" with officials from the
Knights, Bank of America, national architecture and
construction firms the team has hired for the ballpark
project and local firms that would be contracted for the
project. A third meeting "is planned in the next two
weeks." Knights officials hope that a new balpark will
boost the team's average attendance from its current 5,000
per game to 7,500 per game, an "important step in showing
Charlotte can support" an MLB team. But HOK Sports Senior
Associate Steven Boyd, whose firm has been hired by the team
to design the ballpark, said that building a 10,000-seat
ballpark that is expandable to 40,000 "would at least double
its construction cost." As a result, Knights Owner Don
Beaver "is leaning against making the stadium expandable."
Beaver: "Obviously if we started construction and [MLB] came
to us and said you're going to get a big-league team, we
could make the design changes at that time to make it [an
MLB] ballpark" (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 6/18).
READY FOR THE SHOW? In Charlotte, Stan Olson wrote that
the city needs to generate interest in baseball because "in
the near future, [MLB] will call on Charlotte, offering us
the Expos or Twins or some other moribund franchise
desperate for a city to save it." More Olson: "If our
chance comes and we don't take it, teams will shrug and look
instead to San Antonio or Louisville. ... And our chance
might not come again" (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 6/18). But
Charlotte-based Muhleman Marketing Founder & CEO Max
Muhleman said that with an MLB team in Charlotte, "There
would be a short romance with seeing the five or six quality
teams and then a lot of apathy" (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 6/19).
