Stadium Vote One Week Away...What A Crazy Summer/Darth Rosen Trying To Stop Stadium Deal

The Magic's stadium deal vote is exactly one week away, and for all the good times we've had lately with free agency and the coaching search, suddenly things are quite serious since the outcome of this vote will effectively decide the team's fate for the significant future.

The Orlando Sentinel wrote today about a bunch of ways the Magic can help to push the stadium deal through. The basic thought is that if the Magic throw more money into the project, it will get done. Commissioner Mildred Fernandez requested the Magic make a contribution of 100 million and the Magic have pledged 60-75 million, so they could up that figure if it is a major stumbling block.

Speaking of stumbling blocks, one major one is hotel magnate Harris Rosen...who will heretofore be named Darth Rosen. This guy has pull within the politics of Florida and is opposed to the stadium and convention center ideas entirely. Rosen would prefer the money be spent towards fighting crime in Orlando.

At first, I was a bit torn to be honest. Rudy Guliani completely revitalized New York with his anti-crime movements and made the city a really safe place to live and work for me. As a shameless lover of the Orlando area, I wouldn't mind seeing the area be safe for years to come.

-Then, about one-tenth of a second after having this thought, I came to my senses. Darth Rosen was not only trying to take my favorite sports team away from me, but he was also trying to destroy a deal that would usher Orlando into mention with the top cities in America. Let's face the facts: compared to Miami and other major cities, the city of Orlando is still small-time. Getting a stadium and convention center would suddenly propel Orlando into a place that people had a reason to visit beyond the tourist attractions. I personally believe that it is this pleasant idea of the expansion of Orlando that is thorn in Darth Rosen's side. Nowadays people spend most of their time and money at hotels and theme parks, and those two places see almost all of the money. If people have a reason to go elsewhere to hang out, that is a lot of money Rosen's hotels stand to lose on being 'the only place to go in town'. When one looks at it this way, the anti-crime movements seem shallow particularly when it should be mentioned that primarily the tourist areas (Darth Rosen's areas) would be the ones receiving the bulk of it.

If this wasn't enough of a reason to dislike Darth Rosen, consider THIS: For those of you who saw "The Aviator", Darth Rosen looks exactly like the villainous Alan Alda:

If that's not concrete reasoning, I don't know what is.

As far as the fate of the proposal, the obvious question comes to mind "what if the thing gets shot down?" Sentinel reporters Mark Schlueb and David Damron answered this for us:

"Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer's staff has been working on this proposal for two
years, and city officials have been negotiating the details with County Mayor
Rich Crotty's staff for the past year. The city has already spent $35.5 million
on land for the Orlando Magic arena and more than $1 million on consultants.
With that much time and money invested, don't expect Dyer, Crotty, the Magic or
arts patrons to give up if the vote doesn't go their way. They would likely go
back to the negotiating table, tweak the agreement and lobby commissioners
intensely until they line up the votes they need."

Even though that is somewhat comforting, as a guy who has been waiting for the Florida Marlins' stadium to get done for about 800 years I am still worried.

With the coaching search and free agency basically taken care of (the team is waiting in regards to making more free agency signings for the time being supposedly), it looks like this stadium stuff will hop in and take the drama spotlight. Hope things go well for the Orlando Magic.