Shared Air

His latest column, “Build it, and they will come?” is one-half exasperation and one-half folding to what he percives to be a better hand…

It’s time to end this long, drawn-out debate over the best site for a new baseball stadium in Richmond.The Shockoe Bottom location represents the only real momentum we have toward a ballpark. Highwoods Properties, which has proposed the Shockoe Center development, appears to be the big-league player in the batter’s box.

Mayor Dwight C. Jones is correct in saying there is no consensus on the ballpark. But if we wait to build consensus, we’ll never build a ballpark. People are entrenched in their points of view.

The ever-cautious Jones must lead here, moving various parties and regional partners beyond self-interest.

Big-league player versus the entrenched, the ever-cautious. That’s one way to read it. Others might say that the “big-league player” is the only one who accepted an invitation to the game-table, the only one which replied to an RFP.  But Williams’ most interesting line is this:

Don’t tell me that the suburbanites won’t come to Shockoe Bottom. Part of the attachment to The Diamond, I’d argue, is at least partially rooted in an irrational fear of downtown. But I suspect that for hardcore baseball fans, the love of the sport would eventually outweigh those fears. As they said in “Field of Dreams,” build it and they will come.

Funny. MPW seems to think those people drove to a cornfield in Iowa looking for Baseball. Maybe it’s not funny, just ironic, that they were looking for a past idyll and connection that had little less to do with lights and warning paths and more to do with humanity, continuity and lost community. Lots of the things that a town so loudly “about” history and heritage should have, ahem, more facility in understanding. At the risk of being redundant, what they came for wasn’t the “It” that Ray Kinsella built, what they came for was existential calm and a settling of their identity and souls. (That qualifies as ironic, given the assets in play here, doesn’t it?)

It’s a shame that Williams is so willing to not “go the distance” as he urges in his column. Maybe it’s becuase he too doesn’t understand the true nature of the opportunity before him , and us, maybe he’s listening to the wrong voices, if he’s hearing at all.

Look, we’re back to where we started, aren’t we? A regional facility that needs regional buy-in and regional money to stay afloat, but with absolutely no regional purpose or narrative to rationalize it. Williams misses the point that what makes this a Class-A investment to *then* be marketed to investor capital pools is precisely the needed endorsement of the city as sugar daddy and guarantor of last resort.  And interstate access, or the fact that we’ve moved on from 1978 cultural perceptions doesn’t flip the switch either.

This thing is on life supoport unless Highwoods and GRTC, the two organized projects many oppose, get their acts together and find a way to integrate their missions/goals and offer one hellacious destination that brings along, in a meaningful clearly explored way,  the other two pieces of unfocused heritage projects people like — historic green market, Lumpkins 1/2 acre — into the mix. When it comes to Shockoe and it’s potential, maybe some folks are suddenly realizing they hang together or they hang separately. Maybe.