Check clears way for Twins ballpark work to start

Hennepin County gave $13.75 million to a judge; the county attorney said the sale could have gone better.

By Mike Kaszuba, Star Tribune

Last update: May 1, 2007 - 10:04 PM

Hennepin County handed a check for $13.75 million to a judge Tuesday in a move that all but assures that construction of a new ballpark for the Minnesota Twins will begin by June 1.

The payment followed the removal of the last roadblock to the deal and ended a confusing four-month dispute over the purchase of the 8-acre ballpark site.

At the same time, in a statement that amounted to the most forceful critique of the county's role in the land purchase controversy, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman acknowledged that the county may have erred in its handling of the land sale.

"Anyone looking at this in retrospect, right now, might have handled this differently -- I think both sides," he said. "There's some things that could have been done differently -- options picked up, discussions occurred earlier."

Work will begin on the 40,000-seat stadium in downtown Minneapolis while a separate condemnation court hearing takes place this summer to determine the final land price.

The county's check is for what it considers the land to be worth.

For most of last year, after the Legislature approved the ballpark proposal, county and team officials had celebrated the end of a decade-long struggle to build a new ballpark for the Twins, which have played in the Metrodome for a quarter century.

But elation turned to confusion -- and then anger -- as the county and representatives of Land Partners II, the partnership that owned the site, feuded over the land's sale price.

County officials said the land owners, who had campaigned to have the ballpark built on the property, suddenly turned uncooperative as negotiations over a sale price began. The land owners, in turn, complained that the county and team had made assumptions without consulting them and insisted the property was worth far more than the county was offering.

With the two sides at an impasse, construction officials said the delay was threatening a spring 2010 opening of the new stadium.

The deadlock was resolved last month when the Twins announced that they would contribute an additional, though undisclosed, amount of money. That let the county move ahead with its condemnation, knowing someone will cover any higher price determined in court. A condemnation hearing will begin June 25.

The Twins, meanwhile, said they have cleared a final hurdle by reaching a series of agreements with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, whose railroad tracks run alongside the proposed stadium.

Hennepin County Commissioner Mike Opat, the lead stadium negotiator for the County Board, said Tuesday that in hindsight he would not have had the legislation approving the ballpark tie the project to a specific property -- the Land Partners II site.

"The process of purchasing this land has been too difficult and taken too long," Opat said in a prepared statement.

But Rich Pogin, a Land Partners II official, said the county is to blame for the delay. "It's a little bizarre to not try at all to negotiate," he said.

Mike Kaszuba • 612-673-4388 • mkaszuba@startribune.com

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