Vegas pitch has rival impressed

Monday, May 24, 2004 | 9:11 a.m.

In the aftermath of Major League Baseball's quarterly meetings late last week, a chief figure who is attempting to lure the Montreal Expos to Norfolk, Va., said Las Vegas is a better option for the team than Washington, D.C.

William Somerindyke and Jason Osborne head the Norfolk group's efforts to land the Expos.

"I've said from the beginning that Las Vegas is more of a contender than Washington," Somerindyke told The Virginian-Pilot. "It could be one of the finest corporate markets in the country."

That did not surprise Mike Shapiro, a consultant for San Francisco Bay Area-based Centerfield Management Group who has served as the point man in the Las Vegas groups' pursuit of the Expos for more than a year.

"I agree," Shapiro said Sunday. "That's the basis of what we have proposed to baseball ... that (the Las Vegas) marketplace is dynamic. There is no place like it that can accommodate both the growth factor and the internationalism that this market can provide."

In addition, for the first time, Shapiro referred to a wealth of surveys and other research, independent and otherwise, that prove how frequently Las Vegas visitors would attend major league baseball in the city.

Local public relations firm Brown & Partners projects that 3 million of the estimated 36 million who will visit Las Vegas in 2004 will be from a foreign country, and approximately 270,000 visitors are in Las Vegas on any given day.

"All I can say to you is, there have been multiple studies conducted," Shapiro said, "and each study that I've seen has confirmed our assumption that there will be a significant penetration into the visitor base."

Shapiro declined to elaborate on any of those facts or figures, as have various other sources who have been involved in the Las Vegas project.

Brown & Partners has been involved for about two months, and Teamscape and the Las Vegas Sports and Entertainment Co. (LVSE) have spearheaded the drive for the Expos.

Teamscape is headed by Lou Weisbach, of Niles, Ill. LVSE is overseen by Manhattan financier Robert Blumenfeld, who again politely declined to comment about the project Sunday.

Shapiro works for both Teamscape and LVSE, and he was also pleased to learn about MLB commissioner Bud Selig's latest comments regarding the danger of moving the Expos into the Baltimore Orioles' backyard.

Selig has said he would like to make a decision on where the Expos will play next season, and announce it, by mid-July. However, his own staff considers that All-Star deadline to be soft.

Washington, Norfolk, Northern Virginia and Portland, Ore., are among the candidate cities that are battling Las Vegas for the Expos.

Orioles owner Peter Angelos, a lawyer who has made $1 billion, give or take a few $100 million, by winning asbestos, lead-paint and tobacco cases, has charged that moving the Expos to Washington would infringe upon his team's rights to the territory.

Angelos told the Sun recently that he would battle such a decision with all of his means and money.

Washington Mayor Anthony Williams has plans for a stadium completely funded by public financing on the drawing board, but public funding would require approval by the D.C. Council.

Council members David Catania and Adrian Fenty have expressed their concerns, to the Washington Post, about such a proposal.

Should Selig and baseball's nine-member relocation committee tab D.C. or Northern Virginia, Angelos could block that decision by getting seven other owners to vote no in an owners' summit.

The Expos are in their third season of being run by baseball's 29 other owners, and owners must have a three-quarters majority vote for relocation. The Washington Times has speculated that Angelos might already have at least five owners who would vote with him.

Ultimately, if the Expos were moved into his general vicinity, Angelos has litigation as a final option.

"Baseball, back in 1968, didn't take the care it should have when it moved a team into Oakland without assuming what it would do to San Francisco," Selig said, as reported in the Virginian-Pilot. "As a result, for a long period of time, there was a lot of difficulty."

The Giants enjoyed 10 consecutive years of at least 1 million in annual attendance when they left New York for San Francisco, until the A's landed in Oakland in '68.

Then, despite playing winning baseball (88-74), the Giants drew only 837,220 in '68, beginning a 10-year stretch in which they only drew 1 million in a season once.

In a horrible run in the late 1970s, the A's drew fewer than 530,000 in a season in three consecutive years.

"We want to be thoughtful in this procedure," Selig said. "I have to worry about the health of 30 franchises. I want to make sure everything we do helps the sport and helps the franchises, and doesn't hurt."

Shapiro said Selig will have to heavily weigh how the Expos, in D.C. or Northern Virginia, would affect the Orioles.

"I think that is one of the very important factors that the committee is going to have to consider," Shapiro said, "in making a judgment of where to put another franchise.

"Among the many factors the committee will have to consider is what it might to do bring a franchise into a market that (will be) shared by another franchise. I'm sure the committee is weighing that."