Rhubarb rages: was the ballpark on first?

• Author: Maley, Frank
• Position: Tar Heel Tattler

Yogi Berra once said, "It ain't over 'til it's over." Jim Melvin says his fight to build a minor-league baseball stadium in downtown Greensboro is over. "We're building a stadium on that site for $20 million," says Melvin, president of the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation and a former mayor. "We don't see any obstacles in the way."

Downtown Greensboro Renaissance Inc. -- the company the foundation set up for the project -- has even broken ground for a maintenance building on the site. To Melvin, its progress means DGR has a vested right to finish the project.

But for ballpark opponents, city officials and even some of Melvin's teammates, Berra's words still apply. For one thing, Greensboro residents are scheduled to vote Oct. 7 on an initiative that would ban stadiums on property zoned the way the site is. If foes win, the stadium ban goes into effect. And it's not clear whether the project has progressed far enough to exempt it, Deputy City Attorney Terry Wood says.

Opponents dispute that DGR gets to finish the stadium just because it started construction before the vote. In Keiger v. Board of...