Bob Harlan: It’s now or never

Continued from previous week

“They used to say, ‘They’ve got a Plan B.’ We did not have a Plan B. We truly didn’t,” recalled Bob Harlan.

“We made 15 trips to Madison before we ever started the stadium. Just to get a bill signed to give us permission to start the referendum.

“The reason it took so long to do that is because those people there just went through Miller Park. They didn’t want to deal with another stadium.

For the Miller Park project (now American Family Field in Milwaukee), a 1995 legislative vote created a special taxing district in a southeastern portion of the state, adding 0.1% sales tax surcharge in Milwaukee County and four others.

“Politicians would say to me, ‘Bob, just come back in the year; we’ll talk about it.’ And I’d say, ‘We just don’t have a year,’” Harlan explained.

Former Packers Willie Davis and Bart Starr were in Madison to back the project in front of the Legislature with the Packers, as were Gov. Tommy Thompson and Rep. John Gard, Peshtigo.

“John Gard was with me, and John Gard told these folks, ‘These people are falling rapidly behind their opponents. They’ve got to do it now,’” Harlan added.
“If we had delayed it one year — we voted on September the 12th of 2000 — if we had waited one year, it would have been 9/11.

“We would have lost that vote so quickly it would have been a joke.

“And I think we proved (the urgency), because we built it for $295 million.

“The people from Hammes Co., out of Milwaukee and Madison, who were in charge of the project, came and said, ‘Bob, if you had waited another year to do the stadium, it would have cost you $600 million instead of $295 million.’

“We had nine bids for steel, which was unheard of. Everyone wanted to be part of Lambeau Field. We had workers who came out of retirement to work on Lambeau Field, because they thought it was such an honor.

“But, a lot of times I thought, ‘If this fails, we were probably finished here.’”

Years earlier, sports writer Frank Deford had provided a suggestion in “Troubled Times in Titletown,” featured in Sports Illustrated.

“The answer to Green Bay’s dilemma is simple. It should sell the franchise to Milwaukee for $60 million or whatever …,” Deford wrote.

“Milwaukee had no place to put us, and County Stadium was a bad ballpark,” Harlan said.

To be continued