March 16–23, 2000

pretzel logic

Game Over?

by Howard Altman

There is no joy in the Mudville section of Northern Liberties, where they dream about Pat the Bat spewing home runs in the direction of Billy Penn’s hat.

It won’t happen, says Bart Blatstein, the developer who finally wrested the old Schmidt’s Brewery site from the clutches of William Pflaumer, whose company went bankrupt, allowing the place to decay into something Mad Max might call home.

Oh, Pat Burrell will be spewing home runs somewhere in Philadelphia, no doubt about that.

But the Philadelphia Phillies, who play 81 games a year in a stadium only slightly more appealing than the abandoned brewery, are not moving to Northern Liberties.

The closest they will come is I-95 North, as they’re driving by on their way to play the Mets.

"It is not a viable thing," says Blatstein, who purchased the 14-acre site at a bankruptcy sale earlier this year. "It is not large enough for a baseball structure, when you couple it with the required parking of approximately 12,000 cars. It creates a situation where thousands of people have to be relocated. In addition to that, the access from the highway is subpar. There is no exit from I-95 to take you there."

Instead of a ballpark, Blatstein says he is going to build a community shopping center, anchored by a supermarket that will be a vast improvement over the current trash-strewn mess, a fine home for prostitutes, drug addicts and assorted vermin.

Blatstein’s assessment is hardly good news for the Mayor of Mudville, Mitch Deighan. An activist’s activist, he has been on a crusade to put the ballpark in Northern Liberties ever since hearing his city councilman, Frank DiCicco, float the idea at a neighborhood meeting in late 1998.

Deighan has been in a frenzy of late, spending the last week or so putting the final touches on an emotional nine-page proposal outlining economic and aesthetic reasons to spend public money to build a ballpark on the Schmidt’s site. Deighan says that last Thursday, he hand-delivered the package to Mayor John Street and other movers and shakers in the hopes that they too would see the light.

"Everyone who has read it has appreciated it," says the very passionate Deighan. "There is a growing list of business people and entrepreneurs who support the idea, quite a list, quite a freaking list."

As of Monday, Deighan had heard back from only DiCicco, whose idea it was in the first place that maybe, just maybe, the hundreds of millions being spent on a new baseball stadium might actually be used to extend the Old City economic explosion northward.

I can tell by his reaction that Deighan is stunned but undaunted when I deliver the news that Blatstein says Liberty Yards is as dead as Connie Mack (the guy and the stadium).

"He can say whatever he wants," says Deighan in response to Blatstein. "He said in front of our entire civic association that, if the Phillies want to build on his site, he will be supportive. He also said to our entire group that he doesn’t feel a stadium is the highest use of the property. Now he is looking at Kmart and Caldor and doughnut shops and Payless, high uses for this incredible site."

Aside from slamming Blatstein’s vision, Deighan also questions Blatstein’s motives.

"I sense a conflict of interest here because he is also on the stadium committee," says Deighan, criticism that might make sense if Blatstein were actually trying to lure the stadium to his site, rather than describing the many reasons why the concept makes no sense.

Like the mighty Casey, Mitch Deighan, the Mayor of Mudville, is used to swinging and missing.

Two months ago, during the heated meetings in which South Philly neighbors fumed about having both the Eagles and Phillies build new stadiums in South Philly, the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. said that the Schmidt’s site was one of many alternatives with "fatal flaws."

The PIDC essentially made the same point as Blatstein, that the site is too small for a ballpark and parking.

For their part, the Phillies are expressing no interest in the Schmidt’s site, because of the PIDC report, according to Phillies spokesperson Lee Tobin.

"We have not picked any site," says Tobin. "The Phillies asked for a recommendation from the PIDC. They nixed [the Schmidt’s site], apparently."

What does PIDC say? PIDC officials failed to return phone calls. The mayor’s press office also failed to respond to a request for comment.

Blatstein, who now owns this field of nightmares, says the game is over.

DiCicco, who, like Deighan, says there are benefits to having a new baseball stadium in Northern Liberties if such a thing is feasible, would not bet that it is. He gives the Mayor of Mudville "a 10 to 20 percent chance" of convincing Street, City Council and the Phillies to build Liberty Yards.

Deighan, meanwhile, will keep swinging.

The mighty Casey struck out, but the Mayor of Mudville says he has no intentions of walking head down back to the dugout.

"Do I think we can pull this off?" he asks himself, exhibiting the same can-do attitude that might carry the Phillies into the playoffs. "Quite frankly, I do."