MLB insider: Process a lot of guesswork

Friday, June 4, 2004 | 9:29 a.m.

Major League Baseball continues to be vague about when its owners and commissioner Bud Selig will reach a decision on the relocation of the Montreal Expos.

That has given two groups of financiers who are trying to buy the Expos and move them to Las Vegas even more reason to keep their public comments to a minimum, to avoid the appearance of posturing.

Rich Levin, an MLB senior vice president in charge of public relations, told the Sun that baseball hopes to make a decision on the team this summer.

A longtime baseball associate affiliated with the Las Vegas groups, who requested anonymity, called the process "amazing."

"I'm still trying, but I can't figure out what owners do, why they do it and how they decide to do it," he said. "It's a very interesting, little, closed society. A lot of guesswork, obviously, is going on. I don't think anybody really knows where baseball is, at this point.

"I don't want to get into what we're doing now or what happens next. That will have to play itself out. Again, part of this is trying to do this the way baseball wants it done. We're trying to meet their requirements."

Meanwhile, a prominent figure in the effort to bring the Expos to Las Vegas said Thursday that Chicago-area lender Peter Hueser's departure would not affect the project.

Federal bank regulators started investigating Hueser's Oak Brook, Ill.-based Commercial Loan Corp. (CLC) on April 19, according to the weekly trade journal Chicago Business.

"We're just moving forward," the source said. "I don't see it as being an issue. He wasn't a central guy, anyway."

Hueser, 36, has declined comment when contacted by the Sun. On his business phone line Thursday, a voice claiming to be Hueser's said on a recording that he would be out of his office "on April 19," for business purposes.

Chicago Business reported that Hueser, accused in a civil lawsuit of defrauding 15 local lenders that bought more than $75 million in loans from CLC, is barred from CLC's offices.

Harvard Savings Bank and George Washington Savings Bank, both in suburban Chicago, filed suit against Hueser and CLC in state court in DuPage County on May 10, accusing them of diverting more than $18 million in loan proceeds and payments. CLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection May 13.

The banks' lawsuit contends $15 million of that sum was a loan, made with money diverted from banks and other borrowers, to an Ohio packaging corporation that had patented a new type of steel can for food packaging.

A Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) examiner first spotted CLC irregularities in early April, according to Chicago Business, during a routine review of Umbrella Bank.

The examiner noticed a $4.4-million, CLC-originated loan for a 30-unit loft conversion, partly held by Umbrella, that was listed as behind on payments. A lunchtime investigation of the property, however, showed that many of the units had been sold, due to a large number of barbecue grills he spotted on balconies.

An Umbrella official discovered that CLC had received almost $1 million in payments from the building's developer without paying off any of Umbrella's $1.8 million portion of the loan.

In a media statement, Las Vegas Sports and Entertainment (LVSE), LLC, of which Hueser was associated, said Hueser voluntarily disassociated himself from the Expos project in early April and that his "difficulties" weren't connected with LVSE.

"LVSE remains committed to acquiring the Montreal Expos and relocating them to a world-class, multi-use facility in Las Vegas," the statement read.

Chicago-based Teamscape LLC, headed by entrepreneur Lou Weisbach, is working with LVSE. By all accounts, LVSE chairman and Manhattan financier Robert Blumenfeld, who has declined interview requests for months, is the most influential player in the project.

Caesars Entertainment Inc. is involved in the project, but will only serve as a landlord for a stadium proposed to be built behind its Bally's and Paris Las Vegas properties.

Multiple sources who are intimate with the project laughed at a recent published report that suggested Caesars officials were having second thoughts about participating in the venture.

"I've heard nothing of that nature," said a high-ranking source.

HOK Sport, a well-known stadium architectural firm based in Kansas City, Mo., has divulged to the Sun its plan for a $420-million, 40,000-seat stadium, with a retractable roof and a glass-and-steel facade.

A proposal of more than 100 pages, which was submitted to baseball's New York headquarters three weeks ago, detailed mostly private stadium financing.

The Vegas stadium proposal has been likened to SBC Park in San Francisco, a $255 million stadium that was constructed with $245 million in private funds. The last baseball stadium built with mostly, or all, private financing was Dodger Stadium, in Los Angeles, in 1962.

It had been rumored that certain members of baseball's nine-person relocation committee, chaired by Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, would not commit to such a financial structure again because of the heavy debt that is assumed by the stadium owners.

Not so, according to an influential member of the Vegas groups.

"(Selig) hasn't ruled it out," the source said. "Once you don't rule it out, that leaves the door open."

The Sun learned last week that Merrill Lynch, a Manhattan-based investment securities firm, would play a major role, perhaps in lucrative stadium-naming rights, in the project.

Washington, D.C., several venues in Virginia and Portland, Ore., are among the cities that are battling Las Vegas for the Expos.

D.C. Council member Jack Evans bristled after hearing Selig's concerns that a team in D.C. might adversely affect Baltimore. Orioles owner Peter Angelos, a successful attorney, has told the Sun that he would fight such a move with all of his might and money.

In an April meeting, Reinsdorf told Evans, and others close to the D.C. proposal, that Angelos' objections should not factor into a decision on the Expos.

"This angers me," Evans told the Washington Times. "My time is valuable. The city's time is valuable. I don't want this city played for fools. Jerry Reinsdorf conveyed to me (Angelos) wasn't an issue, and now Bud Selig says it is. So which is it?"

The relocation committee might present a final candidate to Selig by the end of the month, then Selig will make his recommendation to baseball's executive council. Angelos has been a member of the executive council since January.

After that, baseball's 29 owners -- who are running the Expos for a third consecutive season -- must reach a three-quarters majority in approving the transfer of the team.

"We're hopeful to have a decision sometime this summer, possibly by the All-Star Game," Levin said of the mid-July game in Houston. "Whether that happens or not, I can't tell you. But I think by mid-summer.

"The next announcement, the only announcement, we'll make will be the announcement of where the team will be relocated. There won't be any announcement prior to that."

Levin also declined to make Selig available for an interview.

"No," he said. "None of us are talking about the relocation subject at this time."

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