Dynamo Park not in danger just yet

That empty field right there, the proposed site of Dynamo Park in the shadow if downtown, is still on the table, regardless of what you may have read this week about letters and meetings, intimidating and otherwise. (No need to have me run down all the events of yesterday. Read about them here, here and here.)

However, it won't be for much longer if Don Garber (His letter to AEG, Oscar De La Hoya and Gabriel Brener is here.) doesn't keep his freakin' mouth shut and his pen capped. (Read Fallas' commentary on this here.) Nothing will turn the indifferent in this town into Dynamo-haters faster than perceived threats. As much as Dynamo's wins have captivated Houston and as much of a soccer hotbed that exists here, we all know the situation is still somewhat tenuous at best. Public opinion can turn fast, and if you try to intimidate here, you find out what a slight hand you're really playing with, trophies or no.

Oliver Luck, of all people, knows this, which is why he met with Mayor Bill White and called a press conference yesterday to keep things from turning into a full boil.

So let's stick with the simple truths of the matter:

Good news:

1. All sides are still at the table and are meeting. Going back to when the Allen Brothers first did the backroom deal that founded this place, quiet "you rub my shoulders and I'll rub yours" meetings are how bidness gets done in Houston. The fact that the sides are talking to each other and NOT the media means that, for now, no Bud Adams-type explosion is going on. Quiet = Good

2. It's early in the season and Dynamo face the Galaxy Saturday. Putting the focus back on the field, especially if the Orange can secure a win against such a visible and highly-beatable opponent, can only help. Everyone's on the same side when it comes to winning.

3. The city is still buying the land and there's really no other purpose for it than the building of Paradise South. The wheels that were turning before the Don's bone-headed letter are still turning.

4. Both sides were conciliatory in tone yesterday, with White saying, basically, there will be no pressuring, and the Dynamo saying, basically, the same thing.

BAD NEWS

1. The price tag went up from $80-90 million to $105 million. It's still a bargain, but two digits looks better than three in front of the "m" word when trying to sell the thing to the public.

2. Dynamo mentioned yesterday that the city needs to put in more money and nowhere was there reference to the former meme about the team footing most of the bill. This leaves people thinking that the team is asking the city to foot most or all of the bill. If this is true, this news turns from bad to really bad.

3. The time spent on this could have spent on something productive, but instead it turned into an airing of frustrations. Maybe this is good news emotionally for everyone in the room, but in the sheer lack of moving the ball forward I'm putting it in this column.

4. Bernardo Fallas says that UH is rumored to be wanting to raise Dynamo's rent by 50% next year. Luck says that's unnacceptable. There is no silver lining to this one


So back to Garber's letter, which was written April 4. Why was it released now? Absent hard facts, it's conspiracy-theory time. Here's a great post from El Naranja over at Bernardo Fallas' Soccer y Fútbol blog, in which he quotes a friend, who echoes my thinking as well:

Let's see. The Commissioner writes a letter to the Dynamo ownership group outlining the case for a stadium in Houston and listing other markets that have participated in public-private partnerships with MLS. The Dynamo ownership group gives the Mayor a copy. The Mayor releases the letter and says that he won't take money out of police and fire budgets to pay for a stadium (which no one believes would ever happen, isn't how the City finances things like what the stadium project would need, and is something that the Mayor has previously said numerous times) - all while reinforcing his image as a tough business person who won't be pushed around in a deal (which is a great image to have when you run statewide). Then the Dynamo throws together a press conference to say that they're committed to Downtown and aren't interested in moving.

I don't think there's any way that the Commissioner sends a letter to the Dynamo ownership group unless AEG wants that letter. But even if you believe that's not the case, there's no way that the Dynamo owners give White a copy thinking that he won't release it and publicly affirm his opposition to using money that could be used for things like fire and police to finance the stadium.

So have we got a deal or not? No. But will we? Well, I have seen so many stadium and other deals in this city, and usually when you've got everyone wanting the same thing and a lack of posturing, a deal gets done. If the cooler heads that were evident at the end of the day yesterday are any indication, it'll happen, but when is anybody's guess. Read more!

Rumors and ruminations about Dynamo Park

Bernardo Fallas over at the Chron yesterday made note of the fact that Dynamo's self-imposed April 1 deadline for a stadium passed without notice and without comment. But you know as a longtime Houstonian who has seen deal after deal done in this city, other than the announcement of the deal itself, I think this is the best possible news.

Make no mistake, I fully expect the deal will be done this month. The main sticking point, I believe, is over the concert usage. When the Rockheads got the city to build the Toyota Center, there was a clause in the deal that all downtown concerts had to there, with the Rockets getting the profit by the way.

Anyhow, that clause runs out in 2010 or 2011 so I believe that AEG is wanting to either (a) get the city to opt out of the clause early somehow or (b) ensure it does not get renewed so concerts can be at Dynamo Park. This is why AEG kept 50 percent of the team instead of selling away control to De La Hoya and Brener. After AEG's interest in the future use of the stadium can be satisfied, the deal will be done. and then after that, I fully expect that AEG will sell a controlling stake to De La Hoya/Brener.

I say this without ever sitting in on any meeting or talking to any principals, just reading between the lines from various sources around here. There is no resistance from the city or county and Dynamo want the deal done, so it's clearly complications beyond the basic "build a stadium for a soccer team to play in" sort of thing.

So while it's easy to be frustrated, basically I'm very optimistic that the deal is imminent.

What do you think? Read more!

Inching ever closer to Dynamo Park

Take a good look at that picture, because right there is the three-headed coalition that is going to make Dynamo Park a reality sooner rather than later. Dominic Kinnear has put together the team on the field to produce two titles. Mayor Bill White has coalesced the city's various forces leading to yesterday's purchase of the land for ParadiseTexas. And then Tim Leiweke has represented AEG's interests sometimes controversially, but always consistently.


As has been reported all over the place, Houston City Council yesterday voted to spend $15.5 million to purchase five blocks just east of downtown for Dynamo Park. The council also approved a land swap to obtain an additional block. This was mostly a foregone conclusion with White in charge of the, well, charge. However, it was crucial after it was announced at Oscar De La Hoya's official welcoming party last week that the team was putting a self-imposed April 1 deadline in place for a stadium deal with the city. There is no other site under consideration, and April 1 is, after all, only 27 days away. So it's this site (many, many pictures of it are here) or we go back to Square One.

Dynamo starts against the Revs March 29 in NE. Their home opener is April 6 against the Frisco candystripers. My personal prediction is the announcement of the deal will come March 28, the Friday before the Revs game. What's your prediction? Read more!

Niño del Oro interview

Glenn Davis' blog has a fascinating interview (read it here) with incoming Dynamo minority owner Oscar De La Hoya. (And, of course, you can listen to the interview on Davis' Dynamo Power Hour podcast here.)I haven't wanted to post much on De La Hoya and Gabriel Brener's impending acquisition as the reports leave me somewhat confused about the business power structure, and the interview sheds no further light on this.

According to Bernardo Fallas' story in the Chron, AEG has the team valued at $40 million. De La Hoya will have a $10 million stake and Brener will have another $10 million stake. AEG, meanwhile, will still own 50 percent of the team. So the question is, who's in charge here? Hopefully, at the official announcement, which the story says could come by the end of the week, this question will be answered.

While I wholeheartedly welcome a guy like De La Hoya, who has done nothing but succeed in every thing he's ever done (much like this guy), my three main concerns are:

1. The power structure
2. No local ownership (though Fallas says Brener has family in Houston, and I know De La Hoya has multiple connections, to which he alludes in the Glenn Davis interview, in the city's vibrant boxing scene).
3. Will the Oliver Luck/Chris Cannetti/Dominic Kinnear/John Spencer on-field power structure be left intact or will De La Hoya/Brener start intervening?

One this last point, here's a great quote from De La Hoya in the interview, which is exactly what I, for one, want to hear:

“I think Coach Dominic Kinnear and President Oliver Luck have just done a tremendous job with the team. The team’s nucleus of players like Dwayne De Rosario and Brian Ching, obviously you have Pat Onstad who are incredible talented players who have had great success. You let the management take care of that, what they are doing now is perfect. No other team out there can say they are back-to-back champions and that is the thrill about our team. I say our team because it is not just Golden Boys team or AEG teams or MLS teams but it is the fans team and that where we want to keep it with the fans.”

Also, one other question, AEG has been trying to sell this team since they came in. Is their remaining 50 percent stake still up for sale?

Hopefully, more will be revealed when the sale is finalized.

But for now, here's another great quote from the Golden One:

"I can not wait to wear my orange jersey and be part of (El Batallon) crew that they have down there cheering on our team.”

Read more!

Movement on building Dynamo Park (WITH PICTURES!)

The Chronicle's story about the city of Houston starting their purchase of five blocks just east of downtown (not really "five downtown blocks" is it since it's east of US-59?) is really, really good news for anyone who's interested in getting this stadium built. Simply put, without the city owning that land, there's no way the stadium deal gets done in such a great location, so deal with Dynamo in place or not, this is an incredibly positive development.

(The pictures I have run up here before, but it bears running them again. They are of the site in question, six blocks (the city plans to barter for the sixth) bordered by Texas and Walker streets on the north and south, and Hutchins and Dowling streets, just east of U.S. 59.)

But of course, that's not going to stop the Chron's Bernardo Fallas in his blog from trying to get a complaint fest going. In it, he faults AEG for not responding quicker to the news, again blames the company for the slow pace of this stadium deal because they're trying to sell the team and generally makes sure to put the negative spin on things. What is it with that guy? This is not the first time he's done this, so I think a little perspective is once again in order:

1. City buying land on the edge of downtown with the express purpose of turning it eventually into Dynamo Park? Good. Fallas does correctly point out that the city beginning the process of purchasing the land before the stadium deal is done is a sign of Mayor White's commitment. True, and more needs to be made of this. Both Carolyn Feibel's story and Bernardo's blog should play up this angle more. Instead, the story has a headline that talks about a delay, when in fact there is no such thing. The "delay" in the headline refers to the fact that Council will consider the land purchase Wednesday, but probably not have a vote until next week. This is not a delay in any way. This is the way City Council works. Calling it a "delay" is disingenuous at worst and just plain wrong at best.

2. AEG trying to sell the team? Good. What do you want them to do, keep it while focusing all of the attention on that other team they own, the one with Beckham's husband on it? I am all for them selling the team and there's no time like the present.

3. Slow pace of the deal while both are going on at the same time? Welcome to the real world Bernardo. He may think that business deals get done overnight, but in truth, when you're talking about this much money at stake, the pace is glacially slow to say the least. This deal has gone from Nowheresville to the city announcing its intent to spend $15.5 million almost overnight by City of Houston standards. This town never moves faster than this. Never. We knew this was going to happen when AEG brought the team here. There is nothing new here and i both happening at the same time makes the pace go slower, then that's what it does.

4. Major stadium construction negotiations so far without any public acrimony? Unbelievably, almost scarily, good. Bernardo was not here in this city when the negotiations about building the Astros' playpen were going on in the 1990s. That had to go to a referendum, and it passed by this much, though it eventually resulted in Minute Maid Park, Reliant Stadium and the Toyota Center in a series of deals that are nowhere near as beneficial for the city coffers as the Dynamo Park deal figures to be. These negotiations, by contrast, are going slowly (as did the Astros' thing, as we should all remember) but with everyone on the same page and all disagreements, what ones there are, in private. That is, except for what Bernardo is trying to get going on his blog.

I know much has been written about this in the last 24 hours, but I just wanted to add my $.02 as well. There is absolutely nothing, and I mean, nothing in all senses of the word, not to be optimistic about here. Of course, there is still no deal here either, as we would all like for there to be. But patience is more than a virtue here. It is a necessity. My favorite comment so far came from "Chris" on Fallas' blog:

Bernardo, I can't decide which is driving me more crazy. Waiting for the Dynamo to get some help up top to relieve Wondo and Ching or waiting for the Houston City Council and Mayor White to get the Stadium deal done and started. I have friends who sarcastically claim soccer is prt of a conspiracy to make Americans learn patience and delayed gratification since scoring is less frequent than any other sport, but these types of patience testers are getting to me.

Indeed. But if I had to predict, I would say that both the sale and the stadium deal will be done before the end of 2008. I will even go out on a limb and predict by Labor Day both will be finished. If I'm wrong, I'll write a pro FC Dallas post, and for those of you who know me, you know how hard that will be!! Read more!

Dynamo Park, first pictures, thoughts and problems

This is going to be a semi-regular feature on this blog, taking pics of the proposed site of Dynamo's new playpen in the shadow of downtown Houston. I start off with a map of the site, with marking that will be explained further down in this post. In the pictures, I was standing on the corner of Dowling and Capitol streets looking to the west. There are five pictures spanning the site from south to north. In the distance, you can see both the back of the George R. Brown Convention Center and the retractable roof of Minute Maid Park.

As was widely reported last week in several sites all over the print and Internet (See the Chronicle's story here, Bernardo Fallas' somewhat whiney column on the delays with the stadium here and blog posts on the same here, and finally the Houston Business Journal's take on the new developments here.) the city of Houston has started the process of acquiring two sites, a downtown one for Dynamo Park (maybe that will be our next poll, naming ideas) in the shadow of the Astros' Minute Maid Park and the Rockets' Toyota Center and another just south of Loop 610 and east of Texas-288 (10-15 minutes away tops) for an 18-field youth and amateur complex that will also house the team's training facilities and offices.

Needless to say this is fantastic news, tempered of course by the fact that no deal has yet been finalized. Fallas points out, quite correctly, that the main reason for the complication and all of the delays is that Dynamo owner AEG (through Dynamo Prez. Oliver Luck) is trying to work the stadium deal at the same time that it is trying to sell the team, apparently to fighter Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy Productions. This should come as no surprise to anyone, and Fallas' column taking AEG to task for making this take longer by trying to do both at once is both naive and somewhat counterproductive. (Of course, I know Fallas is a member of the media and being productive on this score is definitely NOT his responsibility. Still.)

This was the deal when Dynamo came here two years ago. Everyone knew it then and everyone knows it now. It is right and proper for AEG to attempt to do both of these at once. This is 100 percent the way to go for four reasons:

(A) Anschutz Entertainment Group is not a local, Houston business. It is a long-established fact in pro sports leagues that local ownership of some sort leads to the greatest level of long-term stability (meaning, they don't move, my old Houston Oilers the exception to this rule of course). And while De La Hoya is not a Houston resident, he does have long term connections to the Houston boxing scene, particularly with trainer Willie Savannah and his group. He would not be a local owner, but his local connections, though not ideal, are stronger than AEG's.;

(B) As long as MLS has multiple ownership the league can not truly develop into a self-supporting ongoing cooperative (which sounds much nicer than "cartel," which is what all other US pro sports league truly are, now aren't they?). As a Dynamo and MLS fan, I want AEG to own only one team, and since they're an LA outfit, the Gals are a much, much more logical fit.;

(C) If Dynamo were not working on a stadium deal now, regardless of the ownership situation, they should be sued for malfeasance. The situation with UH does not work out well for the team -- no games on school nights, no control, sharing of concession and ticket revenues, UH being an OK but not great partner, American football lines and hash marks. The fact that AEG is also trying to sell the team at the same time should have no bearing on this.; and

(D) With De La Hoya apparently in advanced talks to purchase Dynamo, simple fairness dictates that Golden Boy deserves a seat at that table. No matter what frustrations Fallas expresses in his column, if that means that a two-way deal becomes a three-way conversation, then that's what it means. This may make the situation more complicated, but it in no way makes it undoable.

But as it turns out there are some other complications that have not garnered all of the attention maybe it should. Christof Spieler on his Intermodality blog had an interesting post the other day about the fact that the land the city is trying to acquire is right smack dab in the middle of three proposed Metro light rail lines. Read his very interesting post on the topic here, which I found on my former college friend Charles Kuffner's excellent Off the Kuff blog.

The map of the site I have included above came from Spieler's blog and clearly shows the problem. This is definitely something the city and Metro will have to work out, as Metro has worked long and hard on these light rail plans and they are not going to take it lightly that the city suddenly wants them to do something different. Fireworks is my prediction, at the very least. Though, in the typical Houston way, I also expect these to all take place behind closed doors in a soundproof room, and the only thing the public will see is a bunch of smiling suits walking out talking about how they were all on the same page all along, now weren't they?

But in the meantime, the dream does indeed seem that much closer to reality. When I went out with my two boys this afternoon to shoot the site, both of them had on their Dynamo kits. I shot pictures of them standing there with the empty field in the background and told the older one that we will remember this spot so that, hopefully, one day soon we will come back and I will shoot the exact same picture, only with Dynamo Park looming in the background.

Read more!