To borrow a cliche from another sport, it looks like the Chattanooga Lookouts – and proponents of a new baseball stadium largely free to the Lookouts’ owners – are mounting a full court press to convince the public and our leaders it’s OK to use our money to build the new sports palace.
Last week, two dozen people from Chattanooga and Hamilton County toured a similarly funded new minor league ballfield and stadium in Columbia, S.C., where Columbia officials extolled the virtues of that ballpark’s influence as “a catalyst for more private sector development.”
It was exactly the kind of pep pablum Chattanooga leaders want us to swallow for a proposed $86.5 million ballpark for the Lookouts. They want us to think only of what they tout as the intended yield for the 141-acre Wheland Foundry/U.S. Pipe parcel in the South Broad District of our city.
Did we mention that the Lookout’s managing owner and chief executive, Jason Freier, also is the owner of the Columbia ball team where our officials got the hard sell?
And did we mention that our leaders – including the city and county mayors and a number of council members and county commissioners and candidates for re-election and new election later this year – took the tour and apparently drank the Kool-Aid after traveling to Columbia on a bus paid by the Lookouts?