CLEVELAND - People here bubble with pride over Jacobs Field, home of the Cleveland Indians since 1994. The owners love the money it rakes in. The fans enjoy its many good seats, at least when they can find tickets.

There is victory on the field. The Indians, long a butt of jokes in the American League, came in second in the Central Division in Jacobs' first year and have taken first ever since. They've been in the World Series twice. Every game since June 12, 1995, has been sold out.

It's a story cited by the St. Louis Cardinals' ownership in pitching for a new ballpark downtown. The Jacobs Field money machine has allowed the team to boost its payroll from $9 million in 1992 to $77 million this year, helping to create the sort of powerhouse that the Cardinals hope to ensure.


"The only way we can compete with the teams in the major media markets is this facility," said Bob DiBiasio, spokesman for the Indians.

But for every victory dance, there's a piper to pay. Pitched to voters 10 years ago as a "50-50" partnership of public and private dollars, the taxpayers' share ended up being more like 75 percent. There were cost overruns. There are disagreements over who pays for repairs.

The stadium cost about $176 million to build, but land and surrounding improvements boost the total bill to about $230 million. It is part of a 28-acre redevelopment that includes parking, a plaza and the Gund Arena, home of the basketball Cavaliers. Cleveland's Central Market Gateway Project was supposed to cost $344 million -- the ballpark itself, $128 million.

The whole thing finally rang in at $450 million, although arena cost overruns were significantly higher than those at the ballpark.

The combined project costs taxpayers about $25 million each year. That includes $9 million annually from the general fund of Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, to cover the mortgage on the Gund, and about $15 million through a special county "sin tax" on tobacco and alcohol. Back in 1990, when voters approved that tax, it was supposed to cover Cuyahoga's share of everything.

Unlike St. Louis, with its division of city and county, Cleveland's 495,000 residents are among the 1.4 million people of Cuyahoga County. But there are many similarities. Metropolitan Cleveland is about 2.3 million, slightly smaller than greater St. Louis. Cleveland was built on a waterway, Lake Erie, which gave the city its first trade routes.

Cleveland is an industrial city with a large Catholic population, many established neighborhoods and hundreds of corner taverns. And, like St. Louis, it has taken its turns being panned and praised by the national press.

The new stadium has pros and cons for fans. Their biggest challenge is getting in. The Indians' total gate of 3.4 million last year was the best in the American League. And with only 43,368 seats in Jacobs Field, Indians' tickets are the hottest currency in Cleveland.

"You have to know somebody to get in here," said Ramzi Mustafa, who runs a neighborhood grocery. "I sat right behind the first-base dugout a few nights ago. I got them from my beer distributor."

Mustafa saw another game on May 17, compliments of his 14-year-old daughter, Samia, who earned the two tickets for good grades in school.

The Indians limit season tickets to 26,000, and remaining single-game tickets sell out well before the season opener. Current attendance is up almost threefold since 1992, when 1.2 million fans saw Indians games in old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Prices have followed suit. In 1994, field box seats were $16 and bleacher seats were $6. This year, box seats are $35, bleachers $16.

General admission seats on the right field top deck are $7 and offer the kind of distance from the field that fans in Busch's upper deck can relate to. Those seats also offer a clear view across the field of what this stadium is built around and built for - three levels of luxury boxes that hang like a honeycomb from the main upper deck.

There are 122 luxury boxes, almost double the number at Busch Stadium. Jacobs also has a separate area of 2,000 club seats for the less wealthy. The luxury boxes go for $45,000 to $100,000 annually. All those high-priced seats are the big reason why the Indians' gross revenue rose from $54 million in 1993, the last year in which the team played at the old place, to $144 million in 1998.

Those numbers are available because the ballclub was a public stock company for part of 1998 and 1999. The owner then was Richard E. Jacobs of Cleveland, stadium namesake and owner of a shopping-mall empire.

His sale of the Indians in February to another local man, Lawrence J. Dolan, attests to the value of Jacobs Field to an owner. Jacobs bought the hapless Indians for $35 million in 1986. He sold the mighty Tribe for $322 million.

The Jake

It is an attractive ballpark. Built on the south end of downtown, it offers a view of the skyline behind the left field bleachers. The V-shaped stadium puts the first row of seats close to the foul lines.

The bleachers rise sharply from the 19-foot-high green left field fence known as the "mini-Monster," in honor of the Green Monster of Boston's Fenway Park. Right field seating is a triple-decker affair, the lowest an extension of first baseline seats.

Each of the luxury boxes has 12 padded lounge seats on an open balcony and a glassed-in party room. The priciest are the 10 luxury boxes down at grass level, directly behind home plate. The roof that covers the dugouts also curves over those boxes, separating them from the first row of $35 seats.

The club-seat area is on its own level, between the lower and upper decks on the first base side. Club-seat holders have their own spacious dining area, complete with special-label beers and meat carved to order.

The per-game cost of club seats is $32, plus a $23 premium that runs them up to $4,455 each for the 2000 season. They are sold in multiyear packages.

Dave and Dee Morganti, who lived in Hazelwood during the late 1960s, own four club seats through his food brokerage. But the Morgantis only attend five or six games each year. Dave Morganti, 58, gives most of the rest away to clients.

"We do this to get points with the customers," he said. "I wouldn't buy club seats for myself. It's a wonderful stadium, and it's great to have a winner, but most of this stadium is corporate America. This is what will happen in St. Louis if you build a new one.

"It's crazy paying for all this, the players' salaries and all, but people want a winner," he said. "That's what this place is all about."

Mark Cihlar has gotten club-seat tickets from his employer, a vacuum-cleaner company. Cihlar, 36, grumbled that the crowd includes "too many yuppies and not enough die-hards."

Drue Corbett attended her first game at the Jake on May 17 with tickets she received from her daughter for Christmas. Corbett, 56, said she regularly went to games at the old stadium.

"The old stadium was my tradition, but I have to admit that this is nice," said Corbett.

Dean Robinson sat in the bleachers with his wife and two sons. His wife's employer had the $16 tickets, twice the price of the Busch bleachers. But Robinson, 33, said the view is wonderful. "The problem is getting tickets," he said.

The financing

Old Cleveland Stadium was built on the lakeshore by the city. It opened in 1931 and seated 78,512. Art Modell, who moved the original football Browns to Baltimore in 1995, controlled the lease, leaving the Indians the poor junior tenants. The Indians won the World Series in 1948 and had a few good years in the 1950s, but enjoyed only six winning seasons in the 30 years before the Jake opened.

In 1984, voters defeated a property tax to build a domed stadium for the Indians and Browns. Jacobs talked about leaving town. One week before voters considered the "sin tax," Fay Vincent, then baseball commissioner, told the City Council that the Indians had reason to move if they didn't get a new stadium.

County voters adopted it, 51 percent to 49 percent.

The levy is a series of flat-rate taxes, such as 1.9 cents on each 12-ounce can or glass of beer and 4.5 cents on a pack of cigarettes. Among the opponents was Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc.

Ohio created the Gateway Economic Redevelopment Corp. to build the stadium and arena. Estimates of tax revenue were close. Estimates of cost weren't.

Eventually, the sin-tax revenue was pledged to retire the ballpark bonds, leaving the county treasury to pay for most of the basketball arena.

Wisdom for St. Louis

Political leaders who promoted or opposed the deal say there are some obvious lessons that can apply elsewhere. The first is this - commit the team to spending a significant share of its revenue on the stadium's debt.

The team put $20 million of its up-front luxury box revenue into the startup costs. But its annual obligations are limited to $2.9 million for a share of stadium bonds and about $1.8 million in rent. And almost $800,000 of rent goes into a special account for stadium repairs.

"Make sure the deal includes a commitment of hard money from the luxury seats," said Timothy Hagan, who presided over the Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners through the public vote and deal. "The political leadership has to say to the owners, 'Look, you're an asset and we want you here, but you can't be pigs.' Owners will take the kitchen and plumbing if you let them. Do not let the Cardinals set the parameters."

For example, he said, St. Louis' leaders should not let the Cardinals keep proceeds from rights to name the stadium unless that becomes part of the deal. Gateway Redevelopment gets the $400,000 annually from Jacobs for the stadium name but must apply that to stadium maintenance.

The Cardinals want the naming-rights money and say it could be used as part of the one-third share it proposes to pay for a new stadium in downtown St. Louis.

Cuyahoga County Commissioner Tim McCormack, who was county auditor at the time of the deal, said St. Louis should decide up front who pays for cost overruns.

"All the obligations, the debt payments and maintenance, must be locked in from the beginning. Clearly, we didn't do that here," McCormack said.

McCormack said political leaders need to brace themselves against weakness because of community attachment to a team.

"I'm not very optimistic that any community can pay close enough attention because of the emotions," he said. "There are overriding issues, like those two Cardinals sitting on the bat, that tend to overwhelm serious talk of how to pay for it."

McCormack called himself a "strong advocate" of a ticket tax dedicated to stadium debt. Hagan said any such tax should be in addition to any existing taxes "because nobody wants to take a cut from what they have now."

The Cardinals have suggested applying to stadium debt some of the revenue from the 7.5 percent in state and city sales taxes, or from the city's additional 5 percent amusement tax on tickets. Cleveland has an 8 percent amusement tax in addition to the 7 percent general sales tax. In Cleveland, none of that goes directly to the stadium.

Hagan said another lesson is candor with the public.

"Tell the truth," he said. "If public money is involved, nothing is painless. You are going to have cost overruns. Don't try to overpromise to the people, and tell them up front that the prices will go up."

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The local authority that built both Jacobs and the Gund Arena next door bought the 28 acres and built the connecting plaza largely with a $25 million state grant and a $20 million loan from Cleveland Tomorrow, a business group similar to St. Louis' Civic Progress.

Cleveland built two parking garages for $40 million, and pays off those bonds with parking taxes and a general-fund subsidy of about $1.5 million annually.