Uptown baseball? Yes. Publicly financed? No.

We love baseball. Major leagues and minor leagues. Last summer, we saw phenom Bryce Harper play in Kannapolis, and we drove down to Fort Mill for the Charlotte Knights, and we even made it to Fenway Park on a warm, August night.

We also like the idea of baseball in uptown Charlotte, as we've said before. But publicly financed baseball?

The Observer's Steve Harrison reports this morning that the city of Charlotte could help pay for a new uptown baseball stadium for the Knights. City councilman James Mitchell, chair of the city's economic development committee, said there have been preliminary talks about the city helping out with the cost of the stadium.

Already, the county has contributed to the concept of the uptown Knights with a long ago, tentatively approved $8 million worth of land and infrastructure for a Third Ward stadium. Now the city may consider doubling down on that investment with another $6 to $11 million for a stadium.

We get why it could be a good thing for Charlotte. Uptown baseball is another jewel in the satchel, another feature to tout when businesses and talent consider a move to Charlotte. There's the potential, too, that an uptown stadium could spur economic development on the streets nearby.

(The counterargument: A baseball stadium would host fewer than 80 home games a year, leaving an empty shell on most other nights. A 2004 study for the city concluded that other uses of the land - like a large park - would encourage more residential and office development, which is what Third Ward needs.)

More importantly, the Knights have thus far shown an inability to finance and sustain a stadium. Yes, the team was squeezed by the recession, along with several lawsuits from Charlotte attorney Jerry Reese, who continues to tilt at the windmill of Major League Baseball in Charlotte. But moving uptown brings no guarantee that the Knights will succeed. Charlotte already has its share of publicly financed failures, including the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Even if baseball is more popular, it comes with a real risk of being another boondoggle.

Last summer, the county granted the team another at-bat by extending its lease agreement a year. The team has until March to show that it has two top-tier sponsors, and we're hoping that we'll see even more - financial documents that show that the team can survive if the stadium costs more, or if attendance projections aren't realized.

What we have thus far is little evidence, from the team or from corporate Charlotte, that the Knights have the support they need to make baseball work amid the skyscrapers. If the franchise can do so, we'll be among those happily walking to Third Ward on summer nights. But let's not rely on public dollars to make it happen.

Peter St. Onge

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