news-record.com

The Winston-Salem City Council made no decision Monday night about whether to provide $15.7 million more to help build a baseball stadium downtown, in order to give everyone who wanted to speak a chance to be heard.

The council listened to more than 30 people's opinions about the additional money for the new home of the Winston-Salem Dash for about an hour and a half last night, then recessed until 6 p.m. Wednesday. The council could vote on the deal then.

More than 200 people attended last night's meeting. At one point, security guards closed the doors to City Hall.

Police arrested one man who had been yelling and cursing and refused to leave when told to. He appeared opposed to the deal.

The Wednesday meeting will also be at City Hall and will be open to the public. The council will again listen to residents' opinions. Mayor Allen Joines said that about 10 people who had signed up to speak to the council last night did not get to speak because of time restraints.

Joines said that the council intended to hear Wednesday only from those who weren't heard last night, but if others want to speak Wednesday, the council is likely to let them.

Residents can also offer their opinions through the city's Web site, www.cityofws.org.

Construction on the downtown minor-league baseball stadium, which is being built at First Street and Peters Creek Parkway, has been at a standstill for months as the owners of the Class A Dash negotiated. One owner, local entrepreneur Billy Prim, has been trying to buy out his brother-in-law, dot-com entrepreneur Andrew "Flip" Filipowski. Prim said last week that the buyout is all but complete.

The team, a minor-league affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, is playing this season at Wake Forest Baseball Park. The city already has provided Brookstown Development Partners, a company formed by Prim to build the stadium, $12 million.

If the public opinion expressed last night is any indication, residents of Winston-Salem -- and of surrounding communities -- are divided as to whether the city should provide the team owners with more money. Still, most of the people who spoke agreed on one thing: City officials should be more open about how they negotiate a deal with the stadium developers and provide all documents relating to the deal to the public to examine.

''Why can't we have more transparency?" asked Mary Harper, a city resident who spoke at the meeting. "We just need the true figures ourselves."

Several of the people who spoke in favor of the new stadium deal were public officials or people who have been active in economic development, including the president of the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce, the president of the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership, a representative from the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, and the chairman of the Millennium Fund, which is also giving money to help build the stadium.

One public official, state Rep. Dale Folwell, R-Forsyth, said he is not in favor of seeing more money provided for building the stadium.

Doug Ruder, another city resident, said he also is not in favor of the new deal.

''Government shouldn't be using public money for private interests," Ruder said.

But other residents said they believed the economic crash caused problems for the stadium and said they wanted the council to help get the project moving again.

''In the last year, the economy has made all of us look a little bit like idiots," said Eric Elliott, a city resident. "But your vision is still the right one.... Stay the course."

According to documents sent last week to the City Council, under the new deal the city would lend $12.7 million to Prim's development company to help finish building the stadium. The city would also advance Prim's company another $2 million to help fix roads and build parking lots. The city would reimburse itself from a federal grant that has already been awarded to the city, but which needs to be amended to include the necessary roads. And the city would finance the company's purchase of $980,361 worth of land for shops, restaurants and offices that Prim's company hopes to build.

Initially, the stadium was to cost $22.6 million. But because of cost overruns and upgrades suggested by the stadium management company Prim hired, the total now is $40.7 million.