Local glove company swings into the majors

When Atlanta Brave Vladimir Núñez stepped to the plate last summer, it was the closest Pete Vinci had ever been to the majors.

His father, Benjamin, owned a vacuum cleaner shop and tried to get his son to learn the family business, but Pete was more concerned with playing pro ball.

Vinci started playing Little League at the age of 5 when he was growing up in Westchester County, NY. But Vinci’s contribution to America’s pastime wasn’t destined to be as a player.

He turned down an invitation to train with the Kansas City Royals because his father was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Vinci spent the next years caring for his father.

While he was out of the game, his preoccupation with the sport didn’t die down. Vinci spent his extra hours designing baseball gloves, researching leathers and contacting factories overseas.

Eventually the Vincis relocated to Richmond, and Vinci Pro was born. Read more

Baseball debate turning into a full season of speculation

As soon as it seems dead in the water, the baseball debate in Richmond keeps coming back.

Charlie Diradour extended his hand in peace today to those in the opposite dugout at a news conference he called.

Connecticut, the giant Indian sculpture, looked down over the scene, a thick layer of pollen dusted over its head and shoulders.

“The arguments are over with,” Diradour said to a small audience of reporters gathered in front of the Diamond this morning.

Diradour was an outspoken critic of the downtown stadium plan recently dropped by Highwoods Properties. He founded his own website, BaseballontheBoulevard.com, as an advocacy platform for bringing baseball back to the stadium abandoned last year by the Richmond Braves. Diradour also owns a development company, Lion’s Paw Development, that is active primarily in the Fan District.

Today he announced he was shutting down the Baseball on the Boulevard site and launching Friends of Richmond Baseball to take its place.

“What I want to do is bring both universes together,” Diradour said.

He invited corporations to post their logo on the site to show support of bringing an Eastern League team to Richmond. He also announced he was shutting down his Facebook group and replacing it with Friends of Richmond Baseball, inviting supporters of the Shockoe Center plan to join as well.

Diradour made it clear he still was personally in support of redeveloping the Diamond, in particular a plan by Maryland-based Opening Day Partners owned by Peter Kirk for $28 million. The company has developed as many as 14 ballparks along the East Coast.

“Peter Kirk sent a plan to the administration,” Diradour said. “I call on the administration to at least call Peter Kirk.”

But that plan could have some competition.

The Times-Dispatch reported today that  the Reynolds Packaging Group is pitching their property on the south bank of the James River, directly across from downtown, as a  possible site for a new stadium.

The T-D reports that a Reynolds executive “pointed out the property” to Mayor Dwight Jones and other city leaders as a good location for a stadium. Real estate firm CB Richard Ellis is marketing the sale of the 18-acre property.

City officials said no one has proposed to them an official plan to build a stadium at that location.

Deal to buy baseball team is dead

The current deal for the Richmond Baseball Club to buy the Connecticut Defenders is going to expire, the investor’s spokesman told the Norwich newspaper The Day:

Peter Boisseau, spokesman for Richmond Baseball Club LC, which had a deal to purchase the Defenders for $15.4 million and move the team to Richmond, said this morning there is no way that deal could be saved by the Sunday deadline for closing the sale.

“That deal is going to expire,” Boisseau said. “The deal could not be consummated.”

Boisseau said financing and the current slow economy “played a role” in the business group’s inability to complete the deal.

The sons of Nolan Ryan are scouting Richmond today as the company co-founded by the pitching legend considering a stake in the team, but Boisseau told the paper even if they jump on board it is too late to get the financing together in time to meet the deadline.

According to a previous report from The Day, current team owner Lou DiBella said the Richmond investor group will lose a substantial deposit if a deal isn’t reached in time.

From the article:

DiBella said he has not heard from Bostic’s group in two weeks, and added that the prospective buyers would lose a substantial deposit come Monday if the deal is not concluded.

”Clearly these guys don’t have the means to close on their own and are looking for a partner,” DiBella said.

Ryan-Sanders Baseball owns and operates two minor league teams in Texas, and has made no commitment as of yet to assist with the Defenders deal.

Local media has reported the investor group led by businessman Bryan Bostic is short of the estimated $15 million needed to buy the team. News broke this week that Ryan’s company, co-founded with former Houston Astros owner Don Sanders, is considering potential ownership of the franchise and possibly investing in the ballpark planned for Shockoe Center.

Eastern League president Joe McEacharn is also in town visiting the Diamond and Shockoe Center site with the Ryans. McEacharn has previously said he is committed to bringing a team to Richmond to play next season, whether it is the Defenders or another team.

Baseball team purchase in limbo

The purchase of the Class AA Norwich Connecticut Defenders baseball team by the Richmond Baseball Club seems to be undergoing a delay of game.

Norwich’s local paper The Day reported yesterday that there is no closing date scheduled for the deal, which current Defenders owner Lou DiBella said was “imminent”  in early April.

The sale is pending approval from the Major and Minor leagues. Neither DiBella or Bryan Bostic, head of the investors buying the team, provided any details about what may be holding up the approval, but it seems like missing paperwork could be the culprit.

From the article:

An earlier tentative closing date for the sale had to be postponed because the Richmond group did not submit all the necessary paperwork to baseball officials. Eastern League President Joe McEacharn could not be reached for comment last week, but said last month he hoped to receive the Richmond group’s application by the end of April and anticipated a quick review of the proposal.

In addition to receiving approval for the purchase, Bostic’s group must also receive permission to move the team to Richmond because the city is outside of the Eastern League’s territory, the AA division to which the Defenders belong.

Richmond Fed on southeast stadium growth

The Richmond Federal Reserve’s quarterly magazine about the Fifth District economy, Region Focus, came out this week with an article about the surge of baseball stadiums being built or proposed in the region.

The article, “Ballpark Boom,” mentions the Highwoods Properties proposal to build a stadium in Shockoe Bottom. It also brings up points on both sides at to whether stadium complexes are good economic generators.

From the article:

Winston-Salem and Richmond are following a path Cleveland State University urban affairs professor and sports economist Mark Rosentraub advocates. “In more cases, these mixed-use developments have produced success,” he says.

“A sports facility is a very large capital asset,” Rosentraub says. “No one would buy or place a large capital asset in a specific location without a strategy.”

And on the other hand:

There are other ways to develop downtown areas than by stadiums, says Dennis Coates, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

There are numerous examples where promises about stadium-related development weren’t met, Coates says. … Typically, stadium advocates approach debates about subsidies by saying the venue will generate tax revenues and create new jobs, Coates says. There’s no evidence any of that happens, but that doesn’t mean the ideal stadium subsidy is necessarily zero.

The article also highlights the impact of recently built stadiums in the southeast, which Richmond decision makers should note as they consider the Shockoe proposal.

For example, the Class A Greensboro Grasshoppers have set attendance records in the last three years that they’ve played in their new stadium. While the stadium has been a success for the team, it hasn’t sparked development. The article states the stadium has several vacant properties nearby, including an empty Chevrolet dealership. A more-than-$60 million project proposed next to the stadium fell apart in 2006.

Fluor Field in Greenville, S.C., opened in 2006 and has attracted condos and restaurants around the ballpark. The Class A Drive have also set attendance records at the new stadium.

The PDF version of the article by David Van Den Berg is available here.

The Fed magazine also has a  article about corporate bankruptcies and whether the current system is the most efficient way to determine the viability of a distressed company. You can read that one here.

Braves’ new turf under scrutiny

The Gwinnett Braves, formerly known as the Richmond Braves, have played their first game at their new digs in the suburbs of Georgia.

While the team may be happy with their new home, an editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggests that taxpayers may have gotten the short end of the baseball bat.

According to the article, the publicly-funded stadium in Gwinnett County was originally slated to cost $45 million to construct, but the most recent (and not final) construction tab was $64 million. Furthermore, the county has been unable to sell naming rights to the stadium, which was projected to cover 20 percent of the stadium’s debt service.

Author J.C. Bradbury echoes many of the similar complaints about the proposal to build a stadium in Shockoe Bottom.

From the article:

It is quite simple: money spent at the ballpark has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is other entertainment options within Gwinnett. The county isn’t getting any richer, it’s just shuffling its existing wealth around. And to make matters worse, the bulk of the spending will be transferred to Liberty Media shareholders (who own the Braves) outside the county.

Richmond Baseball Club set to take over Defender’s lease

Last month, Bryan Bostic of Richmond Baseball Club LC announced they planned to buy a AA baseball team in Connecticut to replace the AAA Richmond Braves.

Their plan to buy  the Connecticut  Defenders is closer to becoming a reality, despite no guarantee that the stadium slated for Shockoe Bottom will be built.

According to local newspaper The Day, Norwich City Council will consider a resolution next Monday that would assign the lease of Dodd Stadium to Richmond Baseball Club.

The Defenders’ current owner Lou DiBella said the team could be sold to Richmond by early April, according to The Day.  The sale is still awaiting approval from the Eastern League, which will likely require either a new stadium or an upgraded Diamond as a condition of the sale.

The Times-Dispatch previously reported the expected purchase price will be $15 million.

The Defenders current lease in Norwich ends in 2012, but there is a buyout provision that allows the lease holder to terminate early for a penalty of $140,000.

According to previous statements, the investors would move the team to Richmond for the 2010 season. The team would play at the Diamond until the new stadium is finished in 2011 or 2012.

Ballpark debate heats up in cyberspace

The debate over a ballpark in Shockoe Bottom has hit the World Wide Web.

Charlie Diradour, president of Lion’s Paw Development Company, recently launched the site Baseball on the Boulevard as place for the Richmond community to discuss the many different sides of the prospect of a downtown stadium. Read more

Rally Caps: The Monday Q&A with Bryan Bostic

Bryan Bostic thinks he has pitched Richmond the sort of deal it can knock out of the park: a $60 million stadium that seats 7,500 and brings professional baseball back to Richmond with almost no public spending. And the 47-year-old is working more than 45 hours a week to convince Richmond’s various interest groups that baseball belongs in Shockoe Bottom. (He has already spent seven years and several hundred thousand dollars.)

And now it’s crunch time for him and his crew of potential owners. The deadline to buy a team is in early March. Read more

Why does Salem, Va have the best run baseball team in VA?

The model minor league baseball operation – everything from the front-office to the fan base, to the public/private collaboration – is about three hours away.

Salem, for those of you who are not minor league baseball fanatics, is home to the Class A Avalanche. The team doesn’t have a great record or produce any more major leaguers than any other minor league team. In fact until recently, the team was affilated with the Houston Astros and had a mediocre record. Read more

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