Well So Much For That

James Joyner has a round-up post on the Dee Cee Council decision yesterday to adopt a proposal by Council Chairman Linda Cropp that will effectively kill the deal to bring Major League Baseball to the Beltway.

The long and the short of the altered deal is that the team stadium, to be built on the banks of the Anacostia River, now has to find 50% of its funding from private sources. Under the previous deal, the District had assured MLB that it would pick up the tab. Aside from what MLB will say to this change, it seems unlikely that such private funding could be raised, particularly by the June deadline imposed by the Council.

Feh.

I confess I have not followed the ins and outs of all of this very carefully. But I always thought that construction of the stadium at the proposed location would pay handsome dividends to the District by injecting some economic activity into an area that needs something, anything, to snap it out of its funk. Apparently, Ms. Cropp (and some other Council members, including soon-to-be-sworn-in Marion Barry) are unwilling to lay out the necessary seed money. This strikes me as short-sighted.