Upon its release, Style Weekly’s Scott Bass writes about the Davenport report on the financing of the Shockoe Bottom Center. Click here for Bass’ comments and a look at the full report.
A couple of weeks ago I penned a piece for Richmond.com entitled “The Tipping Point for Shockoe Bottom Baseball.” It stated that Tuesday, May 12, was the last gasp for those pushing to build a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom.
To the extent the Shockoe Bottom baseball stadium concept is truly fizzling, the tipping point may well have been the night of that RT-D forum. After the four invited speakers made their presentations, a two-to-one majority of the audience members who spoke weighed in against baseball in Shockoe Bottom. Applause indicated a split along the same line.
Although the politicians in attendance had little or nothing to say, they surely saw a roomful of voters. And, they certainly heard a laundry list of sensible reasons why NOT to shoehorn a baseball stadium into Shockoe Bottom.
Five days after that piece went up the deal collapsed.
But leading up to that collapse there had been plenty of clues that Richmond Baseball Club and Highwoods Properties were not winning the public support they needed to convince politicians to get on their bandwagon.
From the online blogging team that was boosting baseball in Shockoe Bottom, there was a telling knee-jerk reaction to a suggestion for a referendum. When other bloggers picked up on the referendum idea they were scolded, too. When I saw how afraid the semi-notorious FanGuy and his/her busy teammates were of the concept, it told me they already knew the public was not being convinced by the PR campaign to put over the Highwoods plan.
It told me somebody had probably seen some opinion polling data that told them such a referendum, even if it was unbinding, would injure the cause of stuffing baseball into the Bottom.
When RBC spokesman, Bryan Bostic, and Highwoods spokeman, Paul Kreckman, spoke at Albert Hill Middle School on April 22 they did a terrible job of selling their plan. I had expected to see lots of support for what was then being sold as “inevitable.” I was somewhat surprised to see how little there was.
In this case John Q. Public was ahead of his elected leaders. That was fully demonstrated at the R-TD public forum. Months ago the good citizens of Richmond could already smell the scam the Davenport report later revealed to our governmental officials, who apparently had been busy holding their noses.
Update: For some news about baseball on the Boulevard click here.
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