Baltimore’s Stadiagate: Who Wins, Who Loses

by Joe Surkiewicz

On the day of the official opening of the new $223 million Ravens stadium, The Sunran a front-page story about whether or not the downtown stadia complex is economically worthwhile (“Arguing worth of Ravens stadium”).
     A little late for a story like this, wouldn’t you say? Debate all you want--a half-billion dollars in mostly taxpayers’ money has been spent on two downtown stadia. The time for an article on the pros and cons of downtown stadium construction is long past.
     Now that it’s safe for a “debate,” The Sunruns an article that is fairly balanced. Big studies shooting down the economics of big stadium deals are cited, although the rah-rah, civic boosterism you expect from The Suncomes through. “In study after study, independent economists cast serious doubt on claims that taxpayer-financed stadiums can generate for a community thousands of new jobs or hundreds of millions of dollars,” the article says.
     But not to panic: “Yet city after city has followed Baltimore’s example, luring sports teams downtown with lucrative coliseums,” the report continues. “Critics say that amounts to ‘corporate welfare.’ Supporters say the investment has as much to do with hope as economics.”
     Reasons for “hope” listed in the article include attracting more people downtown, the prestige of a pro football team, increased community pride, and fun. Beneficiaries of publicly funded stadia, the article informs readers, include the owners of the pro teams who play in the parks, players who see their salaries go up, and some downtown businesses such as restaurants, bars and hotels.
     Not listed among the beneficiaries are political insiders who made millions of dollars by twisting the arms of malleable state politicians to get the deals through. Most notable are construction magnate Willard Hackerman, president of Whiting-Turner Contracting Company, and Morton Macks, a Baltimore real estate developer.
     Here is some history on the massive ripoff you won’t read in The Sun: In 1983 a Hackerman-Macks partnership bought the old B&O warehouse (now integrated into Camden Yards) for $3.8 million. In 1984, then-mayor William Donald Schaefer assembled a blue-ribbon panel to select a site for the as-yet unapproved stadia complex.
     Hackerman, a quintessential Schaefer insider whose massive firm built the National Aquarium, Harborplace, the Baltimore Convention Center, and numerous other Schaefer-inspired installations downtown, was tapped for the panel. Starting in 1985, Hackerman began to beat the drums for the Camden Yards location--where his own giant warehouse easily dominated the landscape. In addition, Hackerman, a key fundraiser for Schaefer, spent a lot of time lobbying state legislators to get behind the Camden Yards location.
     Although Hackerman eventually disqualified himself from the selection process, he did so only after the list of potential sites had been narrowed down to Camden Yards and Lansdowne (in suburban Baltimore County). After Schaefer won the 1986 gubernatorial primary, there was no question where the stadium complex would be built--at the downtown site next to the old B&O warehouse.
     “Is it a legal conflict of interest?” asked the late William Boucher, the former head of the Greater Baltimore Committee and a one-time Schaefer insider, in a fall 1988 interview with me and former Sun reporter Tom Nugent. “No. Is it an ethical conflict of interest? Yes.”
     The worst part of the entire business, Boucher said, may be the way state politicians allowed the Hackerman/Macks partnership to proceed unchallenged: “Nobody said to Hackerman in Annapolis, Gee, you’ve got a big warehouse down there at Camden Yards--and here you are lobbying for a stadium next door. Don’t you think that might be a conflict of interest?
     “I mean, what does that say about legislative integrity?” Boucher asked.
     With the Schaefer-led charge on building the new stadia, Willard Hackerman and Morton Macks were sitting on a piece of very valuable property. In 1991 they almost tripled their investment when the Stadium Authority seized the eight-story warehouse through the state’s power of eminent domain and paid the partnership $11 million for the building.
     That sort of unethical behavior is par for the course in Maryland. But The Sunnever goes for the big fish such as Schaefer, Hackerman or the “much beloved” late comptroller Louis Goldstein (who left an estate estimated at at least $16 million, a fact never reported in The Sun; see the Washington Post, July 25).
     Also not reported in The Sun’s long article are recent polls showing that a majority of City residents still oppose the construction of the complex. Not blessed with the wisdom and vision of the editorial department of The Only Paper in Town, these poor souls operate under the delusion that Baltimore would have been better served by investing the money in schools, infrastructure, housing for the poor and homeless, etc.--and pro sports complexes with sky boxes be damned.
     Some of us also suffer under the misconception that city newspapers are supposed to root out corruption and unethical behavior by elected officials and their corporate cronies.
     Alas, this article is more evidence that The Sunhas no interest in pursuing tough investigations above, say, the State Senate level (where the paper finally went after Larry Young after years of flagrant abuse of his office).
     What a shame. There’s much to be mined in the hallowed halls of Annapolis and City Hall. Heck, hard-hitting stories exposing political shenanigans at the highest levels could make for a much livelier paper . . and might even boost circulation (and ad rates!).
     Now, that’s a radical notion.