Do you think you’ll be presenting
anything next week at the Local Historic Preservation Board
meeting?
Yes, everything’s been submitted for
their review and we’ve worked closely with Rick Stomp who is on their
board and Angie Quinn with ARCH as well as the staff here in the
City Building. We respect the fact there has to be a meeting and vote but we’ve
taken care to position the bridge and where it is proposed to come into
the Indiana Hotel property. This will be on the Harrison Street side, but it’s
south of that area where there’s some terra cotta and so on.
They will look at the colors and the materials
as well as what’s being proposed.
Has anything developed in regards to the
naming rights for the stadium?
Not yet, but I think that's an area that we'll
really be focusing a lot more attention now that we've gotten
everything else going. And I think too, that as
the project starts coming out of the ground and the excitement keeps
building, that the naming rights will be locked down long before we open the
ballpark.
How will the transition to Tom Henry's
Administration coming in?
Are you going to be involved in the project?
Mayor-elect Tom Henry can speak to that more specifically. I
think as we transition from a project mode of pulling the deal
together and then executing it, Greg Leatherman and his team will
become more important to the project than they have even been so
far and that's been very very important. But the Redevelopment
staff along with the construction manager and others will now be
responsible for the day-to-day management of the project. Myself, Steve Brody and the others that have been involved really
intensively up to this point will go on to the next project. So,
with Mayor-elect Henry, we'll be doing a detailed briefing with him
in the next few weeks where we'll walk through exactly where we are
in the project: the financing, things that will likely need to occur
before the end of the year and then looking into the first six
months of the new year under his new administration - to make
sure things are as seamless as possible in the transition.
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It will
be a year next month since the initial public announcement, what are your
feelings?
Well, it's hard to believe. I was talking
with somebody the other day and I was referring to that December
announcement like it was two years ago…? [laughs] So much has
happened in the last year, it's hard to believe, really. I've said
many times I wish I'd kept a journal through this journey that we've
been on. I think it's really been remarkable, frankly, that
we've accomplished what we have and had the support to do what we've
done in the year we had to do it, you know with elections and other
things going on.
The speed with which some of this had to happen - just because of
the timing involved of having a ballpark open and ready for the team
to use in 2009 - was unusual. As it related to public
relations and communications, we had these waves of the project, if
you will. The whole wave of activity a year ago to know
whether we had a project the Mayor was willing to go public with and
then the negotiation, the agreements, the public relations and
communication effort that we made from roughly January through
April. Then another wave between April and July when the
agreements were concluded, just a lot of intense activity - but very
rewarding. I would say one of the, well I guess not
frustrations, but one of the challenges through this whole last year
has been on the side of communications. I would say there was
not one group that we met with, where we had the opportunity to
explain the entire project and the logic behind it and the
components and the things that will be involved where the majority
of people at the end of the conversation didn't support the project.
It was just said to me, and the election has reinforced this to
me, that if we could have cloned ourselves and gone out en-mass
non-stop, that I think the same thing would have held true: once
people invariably understood the entire scope of the project, the
majority of people regardless of what they thought coming into the
meeting would support it afterward. This is because it is such
a unique opportunity for our city to accomplish a major project.
Yes, the ballpark is a main component of it, but to have all this
ancillary development happening simultaneously is very unusual.
Jason Freier and others have said we will be visited by people from
around the country once this is completed because it's quite an
achievement to have all this work done at one time. This
hasn't been about just the ballpark, but a way to get other things
happening. What we saw in most of the cities we visited is
that some time after their initial project, they begin to see the
fruits of some of their initial investment, where we will see it
from day one – that's pretty cool. Return to
the top.
What issues to do you think remain to be faced?
I think primarily now that one
interesting thing for us is that we've been able to really stay true
to a lot of the budget estimate numbers we set quite some time ago.
Clearly a
lot more detailed work has been done with regard to site conditions
and issues, so it's particularly gratifying to
be able to stay within that budget. But
obviously going forward with the construction manager, Weigand, and
the entire team working to keep the project under budget, on time
and on schedule will be a big challenge - because we've got to
have it done by April 2009. There are a number of
partners involved in different pieces of the development so I think
that up to this point the challenges have been: do we have a
project? How would the City finance it's portion if indeed we can do
it? The public relations of the sale of the project if you
will, both publicly and to City Council and then securing the
financing. This is what we've been about the business of doing the last few
months. Now it's really about managing the construction and the budget for the project which will
now be our total focus. We have had just an outstanding team on this project,
all along the way. We have really been blessed with a good strong
group of people that have helped us on all the various aspects of
this project and we will continue to work to ensure
the project will stay on schedule and under budget.
I think to even be at the point today where you have the site
cleared and some excavation being done, the slurry wall and some
things like that, not even a year after the public announcement, and that's
with all the
financing in place, it's a huge accomplishment.
That's right. When
everyone comes back in for the
groundbreaking it'll be almost two
years since the Mayor met with Andy Applebee and the now
owners of the Wizards Baseball team who were looking at that time to acquire the
it. I believe it was
Veteran's Day two years ago and the Mayor happened to be working that
day. Andy Applebee called him to see if he might have five
minutes to meet with Jason Freier and Chris Schoen. They met
at the Summit Club and talked about this
idea of the ballpark being downtown. This was shortly after
the completion of BluePrint Plus. He talked with them
about that vision and here we are. Two weeks later, we'll have
lunch to celebrate where we are - it's pretty amazing.
Return to the top.
