Venue News & Notes: Foul Food at Baseball Stadiums

A fly ball to the stands might not be the only foul at your local baseball stadium. ESPN’s Outside the Lines has compiled and reviewed health-department inspection reports for food and beverage vendors at 107 sports arenas in the U.S. and Canada, and the results are troublesome. Many places were caught with more than 50% of their vendors violating the codes in one way or another. ESPN tallied up each arena’s percentages of “critical violations,” cases in which vendors sold food that “might pose a serious risk for food-borne illnesses”…

…Major League Baseball officials this week blasted San Jose, CA’s plans to place an A’s ballpark measure on the ballot, even as city leaders unveiled details of what voters would be asked in November. “We were surprised and disappointed by the news today in San Jose,” Commissioner Bud Selig said in a brief statement. He called a stadium referendum “premature” while a panel of experts continues to study whether the team should move to San Jose or stay in Oakland. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who was vacationing, issued his own statement, saying that, with an Aug. 3 deadline for placing the measure on the ballot, the city could no longer wait for Selig to decide. “It’s now or never,” Reed said…

…D.C. United is awaiting the results of the economic feasibility study being conducted by the Maryland Stadium Authority in regard to a possible project in Baltimore near Ravens football and Orioles baseball facilities. United President Kevin Payne expects the final report to be released in September. “I won’t categorize [the stadium effort], but, in Maryland, there is a clearer, tried-and-true process,” Payne said Saturday. “It’s potentially a fairly clean deal because there is a developer, there is available land, and there’s the Maryland Stadium Authority. Once the economic report comes out, then the city and the state will decide if ultimately that is something they want to move forward with”…

…In 2012, the Olympic flame will be lit in a stadium that is now all but finished on a site in east London that is looking more and more as it will in July 2012. This time next year, test events will begin. All of a sudden, there is not much time left. Despite the worst recession in 70 years, the construction of the venues is on track. “We’re in a remarkably good place,” said Sports and Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson. “As at today, we are marginally ahead of where we ought to be in construction terms and on budget, which is an extraordinarily good position to be in.” As confidence grows that the London Olympics will avoid an Athens-style meltdown, attention will turn to the operational issues for which the London organising committee (LOCOG), chaired by Lord Coe, is responsible…

…Emotions fumed and facts emerged with little clarity at the Winchester (NV) Town Advisory Board meeting this week in the first public discussion of a proposed sports arena on the north end of the Las Vegas Strip. Chris Milam, CEO of International Development Management, presented the 200,000-sq.-ft. Silver State Arena to a crowd checkered with folks in yellow “No Silver State Arena” shirts, skeptical of compatibility and traffic problems, and with equally vocal supporters, citing the project’s potential for economic growth and employment. The board ultimately continued the item, granting no recommendation for either approval or denial.

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