hhSeveral of you made the connection last year between Gwinnett County’s new AAA ballpark and the new stadium quest of our own Charlotte Knights. It is official now: the Knights want a similar kind of publicly financed ballpark.

How similar? Well, that is tough to say as this time last year the Georgia park was slated to cost taxpayers $45m., but quickly hit $64m. with a total financed cost of $77m. Way back when Uptown baseball chatter first started almost a decade ago, Knights owner Don Beaver was prepared to spend $18m. on a new play-place, which jumped to $35m. once Mecklenburg County agreed to essentially give Beaver the land along with $8m. in infrastructure, freeing up Beaver’s limited cash-flow to play for the stadium itself.

But now that financing has dried up and that $35m. number has been proven to about half of the true cost of a 10,000 seat stadium, it is all out in the open that a — wait for it — public-private partnership would have to build the Knights a new home in Uptown. You know how those work, public money, private gain. See Hall of Fame, NASCAR.

The Charlotte Business Journal has all the details here, including a couple of “duh, of course taxpayers will have to pay” quotes from the usual gang of Uptown insiders. Next up will be the ginned up “economic impact” reports attempting to show that the stadium would “pay for itself” and that Charlotte would cease to exist should Beaver’s AAA operation pick up and move to more free-spending environs.