Fields of Dreams Entice Region’s Cities : Sports: As baseball stadiums go up, economic forecasts may be off-base.

Last year’s California League champs, the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, are near the cellar as the 1995 baseball season comes to a close. But that doesn’t seem to bother Quake fans much. They’re filling the Epicenter stadium to near capacity each night, rooting the home team on and delighting in the between-inning antics of mascots Tremor and After Shock.

The 2-year-old, $11.5-million Epicenter is regarded as one of the finest ballparks in Class A minor league baseball. Set at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in a former grape field, the cream-colored stadium boasts a modern scoreboard, cup holders on every seat and fireworks for each Quake home run.

“This is about the only thing I’ve seen that brings a sense of community, that brings everyone together,” said season-ticket holder Michael Marashlian. “It’s an old-time feeling that you just don’t see anymore.”

Now other Southern California communities are hoping to conjure that old-time feeling themselves, rushing to build their own minor league stadiums.

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Lancaster and San Bernardino are breaking ground this month on new ballparks. Ventura is considering one. So is Riverside. And--in addition to Rancho Cucamonga--new stadiums have gone up in Adelanto and Lake Elsinore in the past few years.

But the price for such wholesome fun can be steep.

Consider Lake Elsinore. Since opening in April, 1994, the Diamond, home of the California Angel-affiliated Lake Elsinore Storm, is by many measures a grand-slam success. The graceful, state-of-the-art ballpark has strong attendance. City leaders say the team’s presence has rejuvenated the town by helping it overcome its image as a rundown community of low-income retirees and bikers. And they believe the stadium will encourage a host of new development nearby that will boost the city’s tax base.

So far, however, the stadium has plunged the town of 25,000 deeply into debt as cost overruns and added amenities pushed the final price tag to $22.5 million, nearly triple the original estimate. Lake Elsinore is running a $3-million annual deficit on the ballpark, and opponents charge that the city’s ability to provide basic services to its residents is now threatened.

“We have to realize what it’s going to cost us for this joy,” said Lake Elsinore Councilman George Alongi, who opposed the stadium.

“Some folks in Lake Elsinore cannot afford to go to the game. They don’t have proper streets and sewers in their neighborhoods. But they’re footing the bill.”

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What they’re paying for is a piece of the boom in minor league baseball that is sweeping the nation, thanks in part to the major league strike that began in August, 1994, and continued into this year. Soaring attendance figures are also attributed to a general public reawakening to the family-oriented virtues of minor league ball. Added to the mix is a 1990 agreement between the major and minor leagues that required minor league stadiums to meet minimum standards.

Politicians who have voted to fund new stadiums in recent years say they are taking pains to minimize risks. Most admit that their cities’ investments will never be entirely recouped, but they contend that the money is well spent for a recreational activity desired by residents.

But some critics argue that these small-town leaders are naively gambling with public money--and that in some cases, the risks of such ventures will still be great.

In Lancaster, Councilman Michael Singer cast one of two dissenting votes against the proposed $7-million stadium--even though the Riverside Pilots agreed to relocate to the new ballpark and pay an unheard-of $300,000 a year in rent plus operating costs. Singer believes the city didn’t elicit enough voter input, and that the soft, aerospace-dependent economy can ill afford such a luxury.

The city plans to fund the project with a five-year loan, which will be repaid with the team’s lease payments and sales of city-owned land surrounding the stadium. When the principal comes due, that will also be paid off from land sales, said Lancaster Mayor George Runner.

“We felt that in many baseball deals before, many communities were too generous with the teams,” Runner said. “We have not risked any level of service by any stretch of the imagination.”

Still, such ventures make skeptics uneasy. One concern in Lancaster is that the city is committed to completing its stadium by April, in time for the team to start next season there. Many blamed Lake Elsinore’s rush to finish its stadium in just eight months for its ballooning construction costs.

What’s more, the yet-to-be-renamed Pilots, who are affiliated with the American League’s Seattle Mariners, are leaving Riverside because they currently reside in an old stadium where alcohol sales are banned and attendance is an anemic 800 per game. At the new Lancaster facility, Pilots General Manager Matt Ellis expects to draw 3,000 per game right off the bat.

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That might be a safe bet, but Zane Mann, publisher of the California Municipal Bond Advisor newsletter, worries that in some ballparks we might see a repeat of past follies by municipalities that piled up debt to pay for a vast array of public projects--from golf courses to convention centers. “My point is, these facilities, whatever they are, are always based on some pro forma projection of how many people are going to attend.

“They almost never turn out to be true.”

In building its $13-million stadium for the San Bernardino Spirit, that city is taking a common financing route: The city redevelopment agency will float a 20- or 30-year bond, to be paid back out of agency funds. To replace that money, the city is counting on tax increment--the extra cash generated when a redevelopment project boosts property values.

If that tax increment doesn’t materialize, Ray Salvador, assistant to the mayor of San Bernardino, acknowledged that future redevelopment projects would have to be curtailed.

There are other risks. Some economists warn that hopes that a stadium will serve as a catalyst for economic growth are largely unfounded. Robert A. Baade, a professor of economics at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Ill., has studied the effects of stadiums on city economies and found that they tend to realign financial activity--residents may forgo a night out at the movies in favor of a ballgame, for instance--rather than boosting the economy overall.

The exception is when a team attracts many visitors to the city who patronize local restaurants, stores and gas stations. But even with major league baseball, Baade doesn’t find enough money coming into an area to offset public expenditures. And he deflates the argument that a ballpark will help attract other types of businesses. “There’s absolutely no correlation between professional sports presence and the locating of other enterprises in the community.”

Baade also notes that stadiums provide mainly low-wage, part-time jobs. From an economic standpoint, public money would be better spent on an industrial park, he said, which would generate higher-paying jobs.

Kevin O’Brien, assistant director of the Urban Center at Cleveland State University, said that towns investing in minor league baseball would do well to consider the many problems that have plagued big cities in their negotiations with major league teams.

O’Brien, a former New York City mayor’s aide, recalled that despite that city’s sophisticated, highly skilled public finance staff, New York “would get taken to the cleaners” in dealings with Yankee owner George Steinbrenner. Like many big cities with sports franchises that threaten to leave unless concessions are made, small communities might find themselves eventually giving more to team owners than they intended at the outset, he said.

Such warnings apparently have not been lost on the city of Ventura, which hired an outside consultant to evaluate a developer’s proposal to build a sports complex--including a minor league stadium--with help from the city.

Based on recommendations from the consultant, Walter Keiser, a principal at Economic and Planning Systems in Berkeley, the Ventura City Council voted against committing funds to the so-called Centerplex project unless a long list of objectives aimed at minimizing the city’s risk are met. The developer and some city staff are now trying to forge a new plan that meets the city’s criteria. Among the goals: to protect the city if the expected tax increment fails to materialize.

“Some communities are so enamored of baseball they just drool and go for it, and now they’re paying the price,” said Keiser. “What if they built this thing and they’re paying $1 million a year in debt service and all of a sudden they didn’t have a team? Who is holding the bag?”

Despite such concerns, the stadium building boom will likely continue. Joe Gagliardi, president of the 10-team California League, said he is negotiating with four communities that want minor league ball and expects more stadium proposals by next year.

Proponents of the new stadiums argue that critics miss the point. One of the functions of local government is to provide public recreational facilities--and what better than a much-loved activity that generates civic pride and goodwill, they say.

“This team has made the whole community proud to be here,” said Roy Englebrecht, executive vice president and part-owner of the Quakes, a San Diego Padres farm team. “Look at the kids--this is where they want to be.”

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Most home games, Englebrecht can be seen strolling the aisles, two-way radio in hand, greeting fans by name. He points to the tuxedo-clad staffers that constantly pick up trash. “Look at this,” he says to a visitor, as two spectators take the field between innings to race each other while dressed in goofy stuffed costumes.

During the seventh-inning stretch, team mascot Tremor--who looks a bit like Barney in a baseball uniform--leads the singing. It’s a hammy performance, but the crowd eats it up.

Marashlian, a Rancho Cucamonga marketing consultant, said he wasn’t even that fond of baseball when he signed up for season tickets. Now he goes every chance he can, with one of his three kids in tow.

“I think it improves the quality of life for me,” he said. “People who live here, they all talk about the Quakes.”

Asked if he ever heard anyone complain about the stadium, Marashlian thought for a moment. “I can’t think of a one,” he said.

Stadium Fever

California League attendance is booming, and so is interest in building stadiums to house minor league teams. new stadiums will break ground this month in Lancaster and San Bernardino, and Ventura is considering a proposal to build one.

Existing Stadiums:

Adelanto

Rancho Cucamonga

Riverside

Lake Elsinore

Proposed Stadiums:

Lancaster

San Bernardino

Ventura