Charles Donefer has offered this rebuttal to Instapundit’s idea for a baseball stadium at ground zero. (See previous post). It’s titled “A Silly Idea for Ground Zero,” in case the link doesn’t take you right to it. There is at least one thesis in the rebuttal that I disagree with.

Putting up a baseball stadium is a surrender to the failed practice of creating taxpayer-funded monuments to the low-paying service sector while the real jobs continue to flee for the suburbs.

and

New York would have to borrow even more money, something that the neither the City or the State have the capacity to do at the moment. The tremendous debt load is already a constant threat to credit ratings and yawning budget gaps won?t lighten it any time soon. George Steinbrenner is not going to pay for even a small portion of any new stadium, which means that government will foot the bill.

The Port Authority owns the site, and in fact built the original WTC. The PANYNJ raises money through bond issues, not taxes. Yes, those bonds are backed by the ability of government to tax people to pay for them, but that hasn’t happened so far. And regardless of what is built on that site, the PA is going to have to issue lots of new bonds. So it’s bond holders, not taxpayers who are financing the stadium, although taxpayers hold the risk. The PANYNJ is insisting that whatever is built on the site generate revenue equal to what they were getting from the WTC. For this, some want to push them out.
And what if they build new office towers, and no one occupies them? Are companies really going to put top people at risk again in the top terrorist target in the US? I really wonder about the viability of a new office tower at that site. It may turn out like the Empire State Building, which was not profitable for decades after it was built.
I think there would be plenty of action in the financial district with or without mammoth office towers. A baseball stadium would offer a nice diversion, be a lot cheaper to build and would nicely serve as a memorial to the tragic events of 9/11. I don’t know if it would work (there’s so much I don’t know about the politics and physics of the site), but it’s not a silly idea.
One other thing:

We already have a good ballpark. What?s wrong with Yankee Stadium? It has served the Yankees and their fans just fine for three-quarters of a century and can do so for another three-quarters of a century if it?s maintained well. Excellent attendance figures year after year show that Yankee fans care more about watching quality baseball than skyboxes and sushi bars.

NY also has a bad ballpark, Shea Stadium. I think the Mets are really the appropriate team to move to a new stadium. Also, I believe you can get sushi at Yankee Stadium (although I can’t find a list of concesssions on the internet).
Update: Normally, I do object to tax-payer funded stadiums, and Mr. Donefer’s arguments are this point I feel are correct. But this is a different situation, where the stadium isn’t necessarily being built to generate revenue or create jobs, but as a memorial to a tragic event that generates some revenue and provides a lot of pleasure for the populace.