Expos’ bid in, waiting begins

Monday, May 17, 2004 | 8:50 a.m.

Here is the letter that Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign, and Reps. Shelley Berkley and Jon Porter, sent to Major League Baseball on Friday:

May 14, 2004

Mr. Allan H. "Bud" Selig

Commissioner

The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball

245 Park Avenue, 31st Floor

New York, New York 10167

Dear Commissioner Selig:

We write to express our united endorsement for Las Vegas to be selected as the permanent location for a major league baseball team. We strongly encourage and invite Major League Baseball to carefully review the financing and stadium proposal submitted to you in December 2003.

We appreciate that Major League Baseball and the players' association have indicated their desire to identify a location that is economically stable, will be a competitive environment for the team, and has an enthusiastic fan base. Should Las Vegas become the official home of the Expos, we are confident that our community will provide these qualities and more.

As you know, Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. Approximately 6,000 new residents move to southern Nevada every month, expanding our economic base and cultural diversity. As a community, we would welcome the opportunity to share and participate in America's favorite pastime.

Nevada would be honored to have as its first professional sports franchise a major league baseball team. We are available to you for any additional information you may require toward that end.

Sincerely,

(signed) Harry Reid, John Ensign, Shelley Berkley and Jon C. Porter

Two days after turning in more than a year of work in a hefty proposal to lure the Montreal Expos to Las Vegas, San Francisco-area consultant Mike Shapiro got down to some real work Sunday afternoon.

During the second game of a doubleheader in which he was managing his son's Little League team, Shapiro breathed a heavy sigh of relief over his business team's achievement of meeting Major League Baseball's Friday deadline.

"It's a huge relief," he said. "It was more than a year's worth of work by a whole lot of people. It has been a whole team of people working on this thing, not just me. It was an incredible, collaborative effort by a huge number of people.

"Everyone feels great relief. We worked real hard and put a good, solid effort on the table that baseball can put a lot of credence to."

A quarterly meeting of MLB owners commences Wednesday, when baseball's nine-member relocation committee is expected to shave a list of potential Expos candidates to two or three.

Washington, D.C., several sites in Virginia and Portland, Ore., are among the competitors battling Las Vegas for one of those final spots.

The owners' meeting ends Thursday, but it isn't known if the owners will reach a decision on a final list by then or, if they do, that such a decision will be publicly announced.

Commissioner Bud Selig has said he is standing firm on a mid-July date to announce the winner in the Expos derby. However, Rich Levin, MLB's senior vice president in charge of public relations, told the Sun last week it is a soft target date.

Levin did confirm that the Expos' new home will be decided by the start of next season. There has also been an understanding in the MLB hierarchy that the team should be permanently established in a new stadium, in its new home, by 2007.

That leaves a vague window of time in which the Expos, depending upon the city that gets them, will need to play in a temporary home, because of the time line involved in building a new ballpark.

Which is nothing new to them, since this is the third season in which the Expos have been owned by baseball's 29 other owners, at a loss of roughly $30 million a year, according to the Washington Times.

They are playing 22 "home" games in San Juan, Puerto Rico, this season, as they did in 2003.

Shapiro said he still has no gut feeling about the likelihood that Teamscape and the Las Vegas Stadium Co. LLC, the two corporations that hired him more than a year ago to facilitate the deal, will acquire the beleaguered franchise.

Shapiro, 53, is a former executive for the San Francisco Giants who has extensive contacts in MLB's executive offices.

"No, I don't have a gut feeling," he said. "It's all part of the process that Major League Baseball has that we are just a part of now. We have to be patient and respectful for their process. And we'll have to respond when they come to us and request more information.

"That's the process."

Shapiro also said he was looking forward to reviewing a letter, endorsing Las Vegas as the permanent home of the Expos, that was signed by four Nevada political figures and sent to Selig on Friday.

Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign, and Reps. Shelley Berkley and Jon Porter, endorsed the letter, and Reid's office sent it to newspapers, via e-mail, Friday afternoon.

"Should Las Vegas become the official home of the Expos," it read, "we are confident that our community will provide (economic stability, a competitive environment and an enthusiastic fan base) and more."

As of late Sunday afternoon, Shapiro hadn't seen that letter.

"I'm happy that they did that," he said. "It shows a lot of public support. Again, we're looking for public support, but not necessarily in terms of dollars."

The Sun revealed last week that Teamscape and LVSC had included in their proposal an element of public financing, in the form of a tax from certain receipts generated by the building itself that would be fed back into the construction of a retractable-roof stadium that is expected to cost at least $450 million.

The MLB relocation committee has made public financing one of its prerequisites in potential Expos suitors, but it is not certain how demanding it will be on the subject.

Teamscape and LVSC insiders have said they could buy the team and build a stadium entirely with private financing.