Starting a new clean entry... The Post's print version of the lease agreement story is now available, "Baseball Consents To Revised Lease Deal", which gives both the good news and the bad news in the lede: "District leaders reached an agreement on a revised stadium lease with Major League Baseball yesterday that includes a commitment from baseball for a $3.5 million youth academy but fell short of fully answering the concerns of some key D.C. Council members." And, just to add to the peppyness: "Meanwhile, some changes to the lease drew strong objections from Natwar M. Gandhi, the city's chief financial officer. [...] Gandhi noted that the new document deleted a monetary reserve account that Wall Street bond raters had requested. Gandhi is seeking investment-grade bonds for the stadium project to get a lower interest rate for the city." And, while quoted as carping earlier in the story, two council members seem to grudgingly admit that there's been progress: "Brown and Gray acknowledged that the city has won some significant concessions. In addition to the academy, which would teach children about baseball and provide academic tutoring, the city would get 2,000 additional free tickets for disadvantaged youth." And finally, because nothing can ever be easy: "Williams promised to send more documentation about capping stadium costs in a separate document called the Construction Administration Agreement, Brown and Gray said. That agreement, which is expected to specify how the construction companies contracted by the city would build the stadium, will be voted on separately by the council, setting up the possibility of another tough political fight for the mayor." UPDATE: The WashTimes story is similar, with explanations of the agreements between the city and MLB.

WTOP is reporting that the city and Major League Baseball have reached agreement on negotiations over the stadium lease agreement. It has been decided to not use the Deutsche Bank private financing agreement, and to instead go with traditional financing. MLB has also agreed to develop a youth baseball facility, to increase the number of free tickets given to disadvantaged children, and to lease RFK in 2008 if the stadium is not completed in time. There's also a comment about the city and the team splitting profits on land sold for development, which sounds kind of odd, will wait to hear an explanation of that.

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