Arena Roulette---- Milwaukee Style : The first problem was keeping the Bucks from leaving; Then the Pettits offered to build a new arena cost free to the city; You see, the mayor didn’t like the location; And the battle began.

Opening Day at Milwaukee County Stadium is always a celebration. It’s a rite of spring, even if there is a lingering chill in the air. It’s a reason--a darned good reason--to take a break from the 7-to-3 workaday world and just plain enjoy the good fortune of having a baseball team, a fine, big-league baseball team, that makes the city proud.

Bundled in flannel shirts, sweaters and stocking caps, it’s the best day to arrive early and set up camp in the parking lot, to sit on an ice chest full of beer and to savor the aroma of bratwurst sizzling on little charcoal grills.

And it’s the best day to stand and cheer and show appreciation for the hometown team. With the stands packed so tightly there’s scarcely room to safely park a cup of beer, standing ovations sweep through the stadium with emotional outpourings that say: “Let the dingy, cold winter begone, and let the sun shine on our team.”

The baseball fans of Milwaukee were standing and cheering again last week, showing the same kind of enthusiasm they showed Hank Aaron, but this time they were whooping and whistling in honor of an unlikely liaison of local heroes.

Paraded around the field to the unending delight of the crowd were Herb Kohl, a little man with graying hair whose name is known for a chain of supermarkets throughout Southeastern Wisconsin; Jim Fitzgerald, whose pay-television network had just gone out of business and who ha recently choked back tears while announcing that he was selling the Milwaukee Bucks, and Lloyd and Jane Pettit, a charming middle-aged couple recently returned from their winter home in Naples, Fla.

“What a tremendous thing it was,” said Bud Selig, president of the Milwaukee Brewers. “It was exciting to see it, to feel it. It was a great way to let the people of the community, or at least 50,000 of them, show their appreciation for these heroes. I think we can call them heroes.

“These people stepped forward and saved the community from going through the kind of trauma that the city went through when we lost the Braves, and that was a terrible trauma, a terrible, terrible trauma.”

What did these citizens do to gain hero status in the eyes of the Milwaukee baseball fans?

They saved the basketball team. Together, they assured the city of Milwaukee that the Milwaukee Bucks would not be sold to carpetbaggers.

It’s being called The Miracle of Milwaukee. But miracles don’t come easy.

One day in early February, Fitzgerald announced that he had no choice but to sell the team. He could no longer afford to market a team in the smallest arena in the NBA. He would try to sell to local interests, even if that meant not selling to the highest bidder. He said that he was very sorry, but there was the possibility that Milwaukee would lose the team.

Those words struck fear into the hearts of Milwaukee sports fans. Milwaukee Mayor Henry Maier said that the city had no money with which to help buy the team, or to build a new arena. He simply advised an end to the hysteria that was running rampant. But hysteria prevailed.

Then one day in early March, Kohl announced that he would buy the team at a price speculated to be $20 million. He issued, anew, the plea for a new arena. Within the week, te Pettits held a press conference by telephone hookup from Florida and announced that they would donate a $30-million to $40-million arena to the city of Milwaukee. Just like that.

In a city losing population, losing businesses--a city that has even lost the brewery that made “The Beer That Made Milaukee Famous”--it was left for a few private citizens, acting independently, to come forward with the millions of dollars needed to see that the city did not lose a basketball team.

While in other cities, mayors and commissions scramble to keep franchises, to find ways to build new arenas, to spruce up old arenas or even to woo club owners with promises of plush sky boxes, in Milwaukee, the mayor actually stood up at the press conference at which a $40-million gift to the city was announced and complained about the proposed site.

No wonder the fans were losing hope. No wonder the news of the first week of March was treated as news of a miracle.

Oh, there was joy in Milwaukee, even though the mayor had struck out.

To understand the panic that was gripping the city over the threat of losing a basketball team, it is necessary to understand the pain the city felt over the loss of the Milwaukee Braves those many years ago.

“That was a tragedy,” Pettit said, as he began to recall the Braves. Pettit, who was a radio broadcaster for WTMJ in Milwaukee in those days, remembers meeting the train when the team rolled into Milwaukee from spring training in 1953. He has lots of happy memories of the Braves during those years when he did their pregame show. “It was a real heart breaker when they left.”

His wife, Jane, closed her eyes, remembering. “It was a disaster,” she said. “This city knows how much it hurts to lose a team.”

When the Braves left Milwaukee after the 1965 season, they left the fans with an empty feeling, a rejected, insecure feeling that finally manifested itself in bitterness for The Rover Boys, the several absentee owners who had bought the Braves then moved them to Atlanta. They were called carpetbaggers by Milwaukeeans, and the word seemed to fit both their actions and the city to which they took them.

Never again would the people of Milwaukee trust an absentee owner.

They felt betrayed. It took a long, long time for that feeling to fade and for the fans to love again. But it never went away.

The Pettits were not going to let that happen again. They now admit that, if necessary, they would have bought the Bucks themselves. But they really didn’t want to own a basketball team. After all, they already own the Admirals, the city’s minor league hockey team.

All they did was offer to build an arena, something they’ve been meaning to do for a long time. It just so happened that the funds became available just as the need for an arena became most urgent.

Security guards wait at the end of the long, private drive that leads to the Pettits’ home in the countryside just north of the city. When the guards notify the Pettits that they have a visitor, however, they hurry to the door to call out greetings, just as anyone in Milwaukee would do.

“We’re so sorry we have to have guards like that,” Mrs. Pettit said, apologetically. “We just hate it. But ever since the sale was announced in the newspapers, it’s been necessary.”

The Allen-Bradley Co., a manufacturer of electrical components, was sold to Rockwell International Corp. for $1.6 billion on Feb. 20. When that happened, Mrs. Pettit received $597 million.

“The magnitude is staggering, isn’t it?” she said. “I can’t even comprehend $597 million.”

Jane Bradley Uihlein Pettit is the adopted daughter of Harry Lynde Bradley, one of the co-founders of the Allen-Bradley Co. She was married to David Uihlein Sr., a Schlitz brewery heir, before she married Lloyd Pettit.

Pettit is best known for his years as the radio broadcaster for hockey’s Chicago Black Hawks. And, actually, it was hockey that first made them think about building an arena for the city.

“Jane and I bought the Milwaukee hockey team in 1976,” Lloyd Pettit said. “When we went to our very first game and looked around the Arena, that’s when Jane and I began to think of the new facility. Much needed. Very much needed. . . . Many cities around the country have facilities that make the Milwaukee Arena look like a piece of junk.

“We have been wanting to build a new facility for Milwaukee all these years, but not until the 20th of February were we able to even think about it.”

The Pettits decided to name the facility the Bradley Center, after Jane’s father, and dedicate it to the workers of Allen-Bradley.

Milwaukee has needed a new arena for at least 15 years. The Milwaukee Arena seats just 9,000 for hockey and the National Hockey League requires 14,000 seats for its franchises. Considering the Pettits’ love for hockey, fans have been expecting the Pettits to make a move for a bigger arena. In the earliest announcements, Pettit said that the Bradley Center would seat 16,000 to 20,000. He is now saying that he will insist on 20,000.

“Very honestly, we have not spent a great amount of time on the hockey question,” Pettit said. “The door is open now for John Ziegler (president of the NHL) and the board of directors to take a look at Milwaukee. I have not talked with anyone in the NHL.

“Everyone wants to be major league, I don’t care what sport it is. . . . I have visions of Milwaukee having a major league hockey club. Why not? There is no reason why the Bradley Center cannot make this city major league in every sense.”

The entire city is excited about the prospect, not just the Pettits. But the Pettits lead the way. “Instead of knocking out walls or raising roofs, we can imagine a sparkling, brand new jewel for Milwaukee,” Pettit said. “The finest, most up-to-date facility that can be built.”

It only made sense that the Bradley Center be built on county land, right next to the baseball stadium, where there is plenty of parking. But the mayor didn’t like that idea. Never a shrinking violet, he stood up at the press conference at which the Bradley Center was announced and said that he didn’t like the site.

At that, a lot of folks conjured up an image of the old gentleman checking the teeth of a $40-million gift horse.

The Milwaukee Arena, built in 1950, is a rather nondescript red-brick building in the heart of downtown. It has been described as looking like an old train station. Certainly it does not look like a MECCA, the acronym for Milwaukee Exposition & Convention Center & Arena.

It’s nothing special inside, either. Just a cavernous old building. Solid. Boring. A lot like Milwaukee itself. A few years back the MECCA board spruced it up by having the basketball floor painted in a bright, colorful pattern. That helped some, but not much. It’s still no showpiece.

Sometimes the roof leaks.

Strolling through the hallway between the Bucks’ business offices and the Arena proper, Bucks’ General Manager John Steinmiller said: “It’s really not a bad building. It has been well maintained. It’s clean. It works. But the architecture is 1950s. The concessions facilities are outdated. It’s just not adequate for our needs.”

The Arena seats 11,000 for basketball, and the Bucks could sell a lot more seats than that for key games. “We went through two years when our attendance was at about 10,000 a game instead of 10,300 or 10,400,” Steinmiller said. “The mayor used that to keep people from thinking that we needed a new building. That misses the fact that if you could put 20,000 in there a couple nights a year, we’d be averaging 12,000 or 13,000.

“I don’t think the mayor was interested in getting a new arena built. . . . I think he misjudged the situation. The people of this city were interested.”

It’s an issue that has been coming up again and again for the last 15 years. The Arena size was a reason used against bringing an NBA franchise to Milwaukee in the first place.

Nothing has been done because, very simply, the current arena cannot be expanded and the mayor has always opposed either tearing it down to rebuild downtown (because of the cost and lack of space) or moving the arena out of downtown.

Steinmiller said: “The mayor just can’t quite swallow the idea that there is a building here that still looks decent. It’s still clean, it still works--why can’t we use it? He worries about taking it out of the downtown, which takes it out from under his thumb. . . . The Arena is what drives the whole (MECCA) complex. . . . The Convention Center is not a money-maker. They make money off concessions in the Arena.

“The problem is that they built an arena without expansion plans. They built it too tight. Anything they can do to expand it would be very expensive and would just give you more lousy seats. . . . And then they didn’t react in the ‘70s when we had (Kareem Abdul-)Jabbar. We had 38 sellouts. They didn’t react to this need until ‘85, when Fitz said the team might have to move, and then they started scurrying.”

The only action being taken toward a bigger arena when the Pettits made their announcement was a feasibility study. And as Steinmiller said: “That has to be about the 12th one.”

As usual, political bickering has blocked the project. As Herb Kohl put it: “People in politics are almost paralyzed by their own bureaucracy--by divisiveness or lack of money. What can politicians do? They have no money, particularly nowadays. . . . I understand it. I don’t think the politicians in Milwaukee are any different from politicians anywhere else. It takes private action to get things really moving. Thank God we still have a country that is based upon the ability for people in private life to step forward and make things happen.

“If we ever get to the point where the only way things of importance can happen are through our public officials, we’re in big trouble . . .

“I think it is marvelous there are people in this city that can make things happen. I’m talking about the Pettits now.”

One way the Pettits made the new facility happen was by not discussing it with the political factions and not getting stuck in the age-old tug-of-war between the city and the county. When the Pettits announced their intentions to donate a building, they also announced that it would be built next to County Stadium. Period.

As Pettit said: “The land is there, the parking is there, the access is there. It’s all there. It’s just a natural. Plus the fact, we want to do it right, but we want to do it quickly, too. Next to County Stadium there is nothing to be torn down. The estimates are 18 months to two years.”

Everyone turned out for the press conference announcing the new Bradley Center--including the governor, the county executive and the mayor. Even those officials who had known about the Pettits’ decision for a day or two, at the most, before the public announcement.

Pettit said: “At no time did we talk to Jim Fitzgerald. At no time did we talk to Herb Kohl. We hadn’t even met Herb Kohl until a week ago. At no time did we talk to the governor or the county executive. I did talk, at one time, to the mayor, who was interested in getting the arena downtown.”

On very short notice, the county executive, William O’Donnell, agreed to let the Pettits have the land for the Bradley Center for $1 a year for 99 years.

Mayor Maier is concerned that losing the Arena from the downtown area will hurt downtown merchants. But he is more concerned that the city will lose the revenues from all the leases and the concessions. It is not as if the Pettits chose to build in the middle of nowhere. The county land in question is right in the middle of the city, where the two major freeways intersect. It’s about a 10-minute cab ride from downtown.

Still, at the press conference to announce the Bradley Center, Maier used the forum to issue a forceful plea that it be constructed downtown. When the Pettits’ attorney, Joseph Tierney, said that the site had already been chosen, Maier responded: “Well, I’m still hopeful.”

Indeed, he and a couple of other city officials continued their lobbying with the Pettits over the next few days.

Pettit, however, stood firm, saying that the decision to build on county land was not a political decision, but a practical decision.

In a further attempt to rise above political infighting, the Pettits determined that the facility should be run by an independent board, a sports authority, to be created by a special act of the state legislature.

The Pettits do not want to run an arena--but they do want it run efficiently.

“We could have done this to be an investment, or for profit,” Pettit said. “But it is being donated. This is a private enterprise. It has nothing to do with state or city government. We want a sports authority just like a board of directors, made up of highly reputable, qualified businessmen, that can act without becoming involved in a political debate every time you want to do something.”

Surprisingly, one of the very few people defending the mayor’s actions--or lack of action--throughout the scramble to keep the Bucks in Milwaukee, was Pettit. He said he understood why Maier would, in thanking the Pettits for donating a huge sports and entertainment complex to the city, use that opportunity to reiterate that he did not like the site.

“Well, now, he is the mayor of the city and it’s his job to represent the interest of the city,” Pettit said. “I have to respect him for that.”

In any drama featuring heroes, there must also be a villain, and as far as the sports fans of Milwaukee are concerned, Henry Maier, the mayor since 1960, is the villain.

The belief prevails that the heroes saved the Bucks in spite of the mayor, who did himself no good at all in a television interview Feb. 8, three days after Fitzgerald’s announcement that the Bucks must be sold.

Approached on a bitterly cold morning when he was on a street corner for the unveiling of a billboard campaign against drunken driving, Maier had no patience with a line of questioning that seemed to imply that he was not doing all that a mayor might do to keep a team from leaving town.

The example held up for him was what Indianapolis Mayor William Hudnut had done to help his city--which recently built the Hoosier Dome and acquired the Colts from Baltimore. The example might have been any number of mayors in any number of cities constantly involved in competition for sports franchises.

But Maier informed the interviewer that he didn’t have to react to what any other mayor was saying because he knew what a mayor’s job was. With an edge in his voice, he suggested that someone consider the taxpayers before talking about building an arena. He said that he was trying to be realistic and consider the taxpayers.

“Everybody is saying, ‘Do something about the Bucks, we need leadership.’ ” Maier said. “How do you lead a mob running down the street saying, ‘We need leadership’?”

Asked if he thought people were overreacting to the possibility of losing the Bucks, he really asked for a bombardment of public criticism when he said: “Well, do you want the truth? I was here when the Braves left. . . . We did everything in our power to keep the Braves from going to Atlanta. But the Braves went to Atlanta. All the business structure tried to keep the Braves from going to Atlanta. . . . And do you know what? Milwaukee is stronger today than it has ever been. . . . The Braves went to Atlanta and we got the Brewers. Let’s keep cool. Let’s do what we have to do for the taxpayers.”

Some taxpayers appreciated that attitude. Most sports fans, who also are taxpayers, did not.

Day after day, letters in the Milwaukee newspapers and man-on-the-street interviews by Milwaukee television stations showed the people to be quite concerned about letting another team go the way of the Braves.

Eva Rumpf, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, acknowledges that the mayor came under a lot of criticism during the crisis, but argues that many of his most quoted lines were taken out of context. She also points out that, although the public was not aware of it, Maier was talking to members of the private sector all along and he was confident that the issues would be solved--as they were--by private citizens.

“His position all along was that the taxpayers should not have to pay for a new arena, and it turned out that he was right,” Rumpf said. “The mayor was in private conversation almost daily with key leaders of the business community and was assured that the team would not be leaving and that things were going to work out.”

As this story continues to unfold, it seems more and more amazing that there was no master plan. But there really was no master plan. The pieces just fell into place, almost on their own.

Fitzgerald did not know that Kohl would want to buy the team when he put it up for sale, and Kohl did not know that the Pettits would build an arena when he agreed to buy.

Actually, in the overall picture, the pieces fell into place very quickly. Two days after Fitzgerald’s surprise announcement, Kohl--a very logical candidate--made a solid offer to buy the team and keep the team in Milwaukee. But panic set in over the next few weeks because the sports fans and the sportswriters and the television editorial writers, did not know that a deal was in the making.

Kohl is not pretentious. He is soft-spoken and does his business from a relatively modest office in a small downtown building. He made it clear from the start that he did not want to do his negotiating in the newspapers. As Steinmiller said: “Herb Kohl’s offer to buy the team was a very, very well kept secret.”

Kohl said: “It wasn’t just a spontaneous kind of thing. I was interested in basketball, interested in Milwaukee, very interested in the community and much concerned about sports in the community in general, so it was something that made a lot of sense.”

Kohl made Fitzgerald a good offer. “I didn’t want to dicker,” Kohl said. Fitzerald also heard offers from potential buyers in Minneapolis, Miami and Santa Ana. The newspapers heard about those offers, too, which caused much alarm.

Kohl has been interested in Milwaukee, and in basketball, for a long time. He, in fact, made the first attempts to bring an NBA franchise to Milwaukee. He went to the NBA with the idea and he organized an exhibition game between the Lakers and the Chicago Bulls on Thanksgiving night in 1967.

But before Kohl could secure a franchise, Marvin Fishman and another group of investors also set out to buy a franchise. Kohl decided that he really was quite busy operating his chain of food stores. Fishman was quite capable of getting the franchise, so Kohl dropped out of the running.

“I wasn’t needed then,” Kohl said. “When I realized that the team needed an owner now, a local owner, it just seemed to me that it was time for me to step forward,” Kohl said.

Kohl’s interest in sports in Milwaukee is well known. For years, he was a regular at Marquette basketball games, sitting at the press table across from his good friend, Coach Al McGuire. Kohl also was one of the original 10 owners of the Milwaukee Brewers, one of Selig’s group.

Just as with the Pettits, the timing was right for Kohl. “It was a very natural thing,” Kohl said. “The timing was right in my life. I’m a businessman with some time on my hands, plenty of assets now. Since we sold our business (the supermarket chain), my assets were liquid.”

Selig, who has known Kohl since he was 5 years old, said: “I think Herb Kohl will be a great owner. Some people buy teams at the wrong time or for all the wrong reasons. I think Herbie is doing this at just the right time for him and for just the right reasons.”

Like so many others, Kohl talks about the importance of the team, not only to the sports fans, but to the community as a whole. “Many businesses have left the midwest and have left Wisconsin,” he said. “Economic activity here is not what it should be and the job situation here is not what it should be. . . . There is a general feeling in this community that we need to be very careful about not letting the bottom fall out.

“Somehow this sports team thing, the Bucks, became a key indicator of which way the city was going to go. . . . It became clear that it could go the other way because Fitzgerald was saying that unless someone from Milwaukee came close to meeting what he thought he could get from another city that he would be forced, against his desire, to sell the team to another city.”

Fitzgerald says that he did have higher offers, but he chose to sell to Kohl instead.

As Steinmiller said: “We’re in the Rust Belt, not the Sun Belt. We’re losing jobs. Our community self-image needs a shot in the arm. Sports is one way to do it. A sports facility is going to enhance the way people feel about their community. . . . What is Milwaukee without its teams? Without its baseball? It’s another Omaha, or another Des Moines.

“The Pettits could have built a library or bought a piece of art. They could have done anything, or done nothing. To me, it really reflects on the people. It’s a true gift to the people. I just wonder if this would have happened in another city.

“It all began with Fitzgerald. He was the catalyst to this whole thing happening. If he doesn’t step forward and put his team on the block and say he wants to keep it local, Herb Kohl doesn’t come forward, and Pettit may not have come foward. If he had wanted to, he could have quietly taken the highest bid and said in a surprise announcement, ‘Sorry, I’ve been forced to sell to Joe Schmoe in Palo Alto,’ or somewhere.

“He did not take the best offer.”

It won’t be long, now, and the Milwaukee Brewers will have a next-door neighbor in their big parking-lot valley. Will that be a little too close for comfort?

Selig said: “I think it’s going to be great for sports here. There are several theories, but I believe that one good sports team in a city helps another good sports team. Remember when the Dodgers and the Giants left New York? Everyone said that Yankee attendance would zoom. It dropped.

“I really think that the Bucks leaving Milwaukee would have been a negative for the Brewers.”

After all, like Selig and Kohl, these two teams grew up together in Milwaukee.

The Milwaukee Bucks, an expansion team, struggled through their first season in 1968-1969, won the coin flip for the No. 1 pick in the draft, went for UCLA’s Lew Alcindor and won the NBA title two years later.

Meanwhile, Selig had put together a group of investors and secured an American League franchise, the struggling Seattle Pilots. The Milwaukee Brewers played their first season in 1970.

“I think saving the Bucks and building a new arena out here is a great step for the city of Milwaukee,” Selig said. “It doesn’t cure the city’s financial problems, but it certainly gives it a boost sociologically and psychologically.

“The people of this city are really excited.”