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Inogenius · 05-04-2006, 04:11 PM

Not really the most interesting news. For some reason it caught my attention though.

Quote:

WASHINGTON -- Ending four years of uncertainty about the future of one of its 30 franchises, Major League Baseball picked a local real-estate developer as owner of the Washington Nationals.
Washington-native Theodore N. Lerner and his family will pay $450 million to the owners of baseball's 29 other clubs for the team.
MLB has owned the franchise since 2002, when it bought the Montreal Expos for $120 million to facilitate the sale of two other teams. The franchise moved to Washington last year.

Mr. Lerner, 80 years old, runs Lerner Enterprises, of Bethesda, Md., which leases and manages more than 20 million square feet of commercial and retail space around Washington, plus 28,000 houses and apartments.
The Lerners will own virtually all of the Nationals, with Mr. Lerner's son, Mark, expected to run the team. Late in the bidding, the Lerners enlisted a veteran baseball executive, Stan Kasten, and several African-American business executives as minority partners.
MLB Commissioner Bud Selig announced the sale Wednesday. Mr. Selig said the Lerners were chosen over seven other bidders in part because they offered family-run ownership, limiting the risk of complexities from a large group of investors. "If you look back at our history, the family model works well,'' Mr. Selig said. "There's continuity. There's stability."
The sale, which must be approved at an owners meeting later this month, ends a long and contentious transaction. MLB and city officials wrangled for nearly two years over a lease for a new stadium for the team. Groundbreaking for the $611 million, publicly financed stadium is scheduled to begin Thursday.
Almost all city officials here, including Mayor Anthony Williams, backed rival bidders. Some officials felt alienated because Mr. Lerner, who despite extensive real-estate holdings in the city isn't well-known in political and business circles, refused to discuss his bid with them at all.
"He and his partners need to reach out very quickly and as extensively as possible to the city," said Jack Evans, a city councilman.
Playing to a wealthy fan base in the nation's eighth-largest media market, the Nationals have the potential to become one of baseball's most lucrative franchises. Mr. Lerner is expected to play a major role developing the land around the new stadium in southeast Washington. It isn't clear, however, whether Mr. Lerner also will be willing to raise the Nationals' player payroll substantially in order to compete.