City Council Approves New Magic Arena Deal/County Council Is Next!

One step closer: The Orlando City Council voted 6-1 yesterday to approve a $1.1 billion project for the new arena proposal. This is great news, but is not really surprising news as the city council has by and large been behind the project since the very beginning. Look how happy they all look yesterday. Not really much concern on their faces:

Also, looking at their faces it can be argued that if this were a movie, Buddy Dyer would be played by another famous Buddy...Buddy Hackett:

-Well, you know, if Buddy Hackett wasn't dead.

We already have Alan Alda playing "Darth" Harris Rosen. I like the fact that actors are practically casting themselves in these plum roles.

Back to the issue at hand, the voting is far from complete however. The city council vote was the easy part. Now the issue goes to the Orange County council, which is supposed to be harder to win over. That part will be the deciding factor as to whether this Buddy Hackett-Alan Alda blockbuster has a happy ending or a tragic one.

I read some things that set off warning alarms in my head that the vote might not go well. One major stumbling block is the fact that several county members want the Orlando Magic to put more of their own money towards the project. Some rumors have been surfacing that the Magic might toss more money in at the 11th hour to push the proposal through if there are conflicts related to it. Apparently the county council members had the same idea, and two of them had private meetings yesterday with Magic exec Alex Martins about the possibility of putting more money forward.

I think a lot of people are thinking that the Magic will eventually give up the extra cash, we'll get our stadium, and everything will be peachy. As with most headlines involving the Magic, nothing is ever that easy. This was the result of the private meetings yesterday:

But Martins turned away speculation that the NBA team might increase its
contribution of $50 million in upfront cash at the last minute to win
commissioners' support.The commission is expected to take up the issue at 2 p.m.
Thursday."We feel like we've conducted negotiations in good faith. . . . To say
we fully intended to get to the eleventh hour and make an additional
contribution is not a fair statement," Martins said. "Our goal this week is to
answer all the questions that commissioners have."

Two words sprang to mind when I read that: Uh oh.

If our team decides they want to play hardball, they could risk being the wedge in what is already a very difficult arena proposal to approve. If the Magic do come out as the party that screwed everything up, it would be yet another black mark on a summer that already has fans unsettled by the coaching and free agency calamities (Donovan's exit, Darko's ire, Grant Hill's middle finger to the Orlando fans, Rashard's gigantic contract, etc). The sad thing is that if the Magic are the stumbling block in the deal, it could be about 800 times worse than all of those aforementioned things because this is the only real event that has direct correlation to the fate of the team. The other botches were merely bad for the P.R. of the team, but this could actually force them into eventual relocation talks like the Marlins.

Sheesh. It's enough to make one's head spin. On the bright side we will know the results rather soon as the vote is to take place on Thursday. Up until that point, the Magic should do everything possible to woo those council members, including ponying up extra money in my opinion.

This vote is too important to lose.