We have a suggestion for the multimillionaires who own the Lookouts and who want us to pay twice or three times for building them a new baseball stadium on the Southside: If we city, county and state taxpayers put up the money for your new digs (along with more donated land), then every man, woman and child among us should get to watch all your games and eat all your hot dogs and snacks and drink all your beer and pop free - forever.
Instead, Lookouts managing owner Jason Freier apparently plans to have none or very little of his skin - or money - in the game. And Major League Baseball has upped the ante with a not-so-veiled threat: Build a new stadium or we'll look elsewhere.
This stadium-building game is not small potatoes. It is an estimated $86.5 million - including $10 million for the newest expected "donation" of land where the old U.S. Pipe and Wheland foundries once paid hundreds if not thousands of Chattanoogans. Our city and county mayors are all for this, but some state lawmakers have said they're a bit wary of supporting a one-time request for $20.8 million from the state or a bill permitting the use of sales tax revenue to help pay off an estimated $63 million in 30-year bonds for construction.
As our colleague and columnist Jay Greeson noted Tuesday: "Freier - who owns three minor league teams and has made a pot of money - wants our tax dollars so he can charge us ... $6 for a beer and $5 to park so he can continue to add to his pot of money. Hey, why spend your money if you can get public funds, right?"
Upriver and down the road a piece, Chattanoogans can also enjoy - completely free, any time, as often as they like - the newly completed South Chickamauga Creek greenway. Tab? About $16 million, much of it in donations from hundreds of generous people to the Trust for Public Land. Only about 57% of the cost was paid for with public money, according to Tennessee TPL's director Noel Durant.
The 12-mile greenway's last mile - actually the middle portion of the trail - features a boardwalk in place of a paved trail, stilted up to more than 40 feet over the water. That segment alone cost $4 million.
"At best, we could build about 20 feet per day," said Durant of the TPL, the organization that's been working with the city since 1996 to establish the greenway. More than just the difficult terrain, the boardwalk navigates historic train trestles and bridge pilings, some of which predate the Civil War.
But it's more than just another pretty linear park that stretches a dozen miles from Camp Jordan in East Ridge to the Tennessee Riverpark near where South Chickamauga Creek empties into the Tennessee River. This is a new artery of walking or biking transportation for largely isolated low-income communities such as Cromwell Hills between East Ridge and Shallowford Road.
Now that's real payback to a community - and not with a whole lot of taxpayer money.
It's true that other segments of Chattanooga's 25 miles or so of greenway have been largely funded with our tax dollars. The downtown Riverwalk is a good example. But every mile of greenway around Chattanooga has proven to be money well spent - including one stretch that connects downtown Chattanooga to the Southside property that may, if our city and county leaders pony up our money for it, become a new baseball stadium.
Along these gorgeous and inviting paved or boardwalked urban trails are no greenway owners looking to double-dip by charging us admission or hawking beers to us. We - us the public - are the greenway owners.
Listen up, leaders: Using our tax dollars as carefully crafted incentives to bring new jobs to town is one thing. Incentives to wealthy baseball club owners to build their stadiums is something else. Call baseball's bluff. Tell them to take the club and that hinted threat elsewhere. Maybe Dunlap or Crossville has a spare $86 million. Instead, spend our money on schools, parks, affordable housing - or even more greenways.