Teams pitch downtown ballparks as home runs.

• Author: Roush, Chris
• Position: Sports Section

They came from Cleveland last winter to do what Charlotte Knights management couldn't: find a place downtown to build a baseball stadium and public money to help pay for it. Tom Chema, president of Gateway Consultants Group, and his chief lieutenant, Patrick Zohn, met with politicians and neighborhood leaders still smarting from a failed effort in 2001 to build a stadium.

They made their pitch June 7, recommending a 1% tax on property sales in Mecklenburg County to help pay for a 10,000-seat stadium two blocks from Bank of America Stadium, the home of the Carolina Panthers. The Knights, a minor-league team that plays 21 miles away in Fort Mill, S.C., would pay nearly half of the $34 million cost to build the ballpark. While the team hopes to be in a new stadium for the 2007 season, approval is far from assured. Previous requests for public money to pay for a baseball stadium in Charlotte have flopped.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

One thing is certain. Minorleague teams across the state have been chanting the same mantra: Build it, and they will come. Many stadium projects have been sold as a way to bring people back into downtowns, pumping money into local coffers while increasing attendance.

After a bitter battle, a new downtown stadium for the Greensboro Bats is expected to open next season. The move will triple team revenue, projected at just under $2 million this year, General Manager Donald Moore says.

Charlotte and Greensboro are trying to replicate the success of the Durham Bulls, arguably the country's best-known minor-league team, courtesy of Bull Durham, the 1988 movie starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon. The Bulls are celebrating their 10th season in the 10,000-seat Durham Bulls Athletic Park, which helped breathe new life into a downtown blighted by closed cigarette factories. Local government paid for construction. "A lot of that area has been rejuvenated because the Bulls, 70 to 80 times a year, bring 5,000 to 6,000 people down there," says Tom White, CEO of the Durham Chamber of Commerce.

Raleigh-based Capitol Broad-casting Co., which owns the team, is renovating American Tobacco Co. property across the street from the park for office space. Duke University, Compuware and GlaxoSmith-Kline will be tenants. Capitol Broadcasting has another office building planned for a spot near the left-field fence. The Durham chamber estimates that more than 70% of the fans at a Bulls game come from outside the city. They add about $22...