That was a radical shift from a month earlier, when Reds Managing Executive John Allen announced the team was so frustrated in getting a deal that it would welcome offers from other cities in the region. No serious proposal was made.
Mrs. Schott didn't address that issue, but said that while she preferred a new stadium on the riverfront, she'd consider something else.
''We'd be paying for it forever,'' Mrs. Schott said of the bill for two new stadiums, adding, ''I'm a taxpayer, too.''
She's also the one whose team has to come up with a hefty contribution - perhaps upward of $50 million - on a new, $230-million-plus stadium. A cheaper home would likely mean a lower contribution.
While the Cinergy option is seen as an opportunity to restart stalled negotiations between the county and the Reds, still others view it as the ''used car'' that the Reds once considered the option to be.
Restaurant owner Jim Tarbell, who has been pushing for a new ballpark at Broadway, went so far as to say Broadway Commons supporters would sue the county if officials don't build two new stadiums. That's what the voters thought they would get when they passed the half-cent sales tax increase for stadiums, he argues.
Reds and riverfront
Although Mrs. Schott's idea has won fans among taxpayers who are overwhelmed by the $400.3 million price tag of the Bengals complex, some argue that extending Cinergy's life isn't what's best for the riverfront or the community in the long run.
''The renovation of Cinergy would, I think, be a real disappointment to this community five years from now or 10 years from now,'' said Arn Bortz, a former mayor whose Towne Properties has been involved in a number of high-profile downtown developments, including the Backstage area around the Aronoff Center.
''Clearly, it's proven itself as an efficient place,'' he said. ''But the current location compared to where the Bengals stadium is begins to make you feel like you need a little more elbow room on the riverfront.''
If the Reds stay at Cinergy, there will be less than two city blocks between the ballpark and the Bengals' new football complex, which will sit roughly between Central Avenue and an Elm Street that will bend halfway across a city block toward Race Street.
Proponents of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center want the museum to sit just west of the Suspension Bridge, and Mr. Bortz wonders whether a transformed Cinergy would dwarf the one-of-a-kind museum.
Freedom Center Executive Director Ed Rigaud said the museum's planners have always considered the possibility of having both stadiums on the riverfront.
Two stadiums would certainly make it more difficult to make the museum the ''icon'' that Freedom Center officials want it to be, Mr. Rigaud said. But there are ways to create parks around the center to buffer it from the larger structures, he said.
''We want to cooperate with the county and the city in doing whatever they want to do as well as getting the Freedom Center built,'' Mr. Rigaud said.
Cincinnati city administrators have been pushing to pack the riverfront with other entertainment attractions, such as a multi-screen movie complex and a 3-D theater, shops and restaurants. All that would have to fit between the Bengals stadium and the Suspension Bridge.
Cincinnati City Manager John Shirey said the city always has known that the Reds might stay in Cinergy.
In fact, Herman Renfro, the Indianapolis developer who is creating a riverfront development plan for City Council, has said he hopes the Reds will stay on the riverfront. That would draw more visitors and make the riverfront more attractive for businesses that might locate there, he said.
''When you're talking about a stadium on the riverfront, there isn't a whole lot east'' of the Suspension Bridge, Mr. Shirey said. ''Which is why the Wedge site got called the Wedge site.''
Mr. Shirey and City Architect Bob Richardson said they hope a transformed Cinergy could include plans to make the structure less massive. The parking deck could be removed, for example. Parking could be moved to garages built in the ''trench'' left over by the overhaul of Fort Washington Way, downtown's east-west connector. That would leave room between the stadium and the river for what Mr. Shirey calls a ''ribbon of green,'' a series of parks the city wants to stretch along the river's edge.
It also would leave some space between the stadium and the Suspension Bridge, perhaps for more park land, to give the bridge and the Underground Railroad Freedom Center a little breathing room, Mr. Richardson said.
Certainly there are pros and cons to transforming Cinergy, Mr. Richardson said, but ''like anything, our job is to work with whatever decision is made.''
A new, improved Cinergy
There is little information about the specifics of a transformed Cinergy Field.
County and team officials haven't decided what it would look like, how much it would cost or whether it could bring the Reds the additional revenues the team needs to succeed financially and on the field.
A study by HOK Sports Facilities Group commissioned in 1994 by Mrs. Schott, Northern Kentucky developer Jerry Carroll and attorney Stan Chesley suggested many changes for the former Riverfront Stadium:
- An external face lift to change the stadium's bowl-like looks. Outfield walls with upper-deck seats cut out to present a new view of downtown's skyline.
- A right field picnic section.
- A steel-and-glass stadium club that resembles the one at Cleveland's Jacobs Field.
Sources have told the Enquirer that team and county officials heard HOK describe a $150 million renovation plan at a meeting in Kansas City in February. Back then, the Reds decided against a renovation, figuring it would be only $100 million cheaper than a new ballpark. But a document surfaced this week that raises questions about how much money renovating Cinergy would really save.
A study done in April for the county showed a renovation could be as little as $18 million cheaper than building a new stadium at Broadway Commons. The study, by Huber, Hunt & Nichols, an Indianapolis firm, estimated a Cinergy renovation could cost as much as $249 million.
The same firm estimated a new ballpark at Baseball on Main could cost as much as $306 million, and a new ballpark at Broadway Commons could cost as much as $267 million.
Those figures includes everything but the cost of buying land, which could be about $30 million at Broadway and would be non-existent for Baseball on Main or a Cinergy overhaul because the county already owns that land.
They also are old numbers, Mr. Bedinghaus argued, and don't represent specific proposals agreed to by the team and county.
Whatever the cost, a transformed Cinergy would accomplish two things: It would keep the Reds on the riverfront, where the team has insisted from the start it must remain. It also would keep the team in a home where the Big Red Machine won World Series championships back when it was called Riverfront Stadium.
Ultimately, those memories might be what convinces the community to keep the Reds where they are, predicted John Schneider, a downtown property investor and a chief proponent of Baseball on Main.
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