The two news items from early and late Wednesday weren't exactly related, but they were more than coincidental. In the morning: a front-page story in The Sun about how The Relic on Howard Street (aka 1st Mariner Arena) still makes a decent profit. At night: a settlement that allows the NBA's SuperSonics to move from Seattle to Oklahoma City.
Two items, both bad news for Baltimore. At least for those of us here who feel the NBA void, now at 35 years and counting. Or who, if nothing else, wonder whether we'll ever see a halfway-decent arena of any size here in our lifetime.
Hearing that arena operators are still making money off that dump can't help but send panic through everybody who attends the events there, because there's no alternative. Is this all they think we deserve? Are they satisfied with this, and does that mean we're supposed to be, too?
It's plain depressing, meanwhile, to see an NBA franchise instantly find a home in a smaller, more remote media market (Oklahoma City is No. 45 in the Nielsens; Baltimore is No. 24, now the fifth-largest without an NBA team) in the heart of football country, solely because it had slapped together a top-notch facility on blind faith.
It's just as depressing to think that if the whens and wheres of a new Baltimore building were decided on today - and, to overfeed the fantasy, if it were built to NBA capacity and standards - Baltimore would still be behind Seattle, which is all but assured of getting the next free-agent franchise, assuming that city upgrades its arena or builds a new one. Either one almost definitely will happen before Baltimore does anything.
The City That Reads? More like The City That Waits.
Plans for replacing 1st Mariner are behind schedule - by about three decades. Specifically, in November, when downtown development officials announced seven bids to build the proposed arena, they spoke of a possible decision by the spring of this year. Now, in July, a decision is expected soon.
Delays like this are hardly unusual, but, as with watching the Orioles go through 10 straight losing seasons, every time arena plans fall short, the agony increases, as do the doubts that things will ever change.
What will it take, one wonders, to get a shovel stuck in the ground anywhere in the city? Even for a building too small to house a major league franchise?
