Might the Mohegan Tribe bid on Dodd?

Something that wedding planners, gold diggers and sports columnists share: We’re all really good at spending someone else’s money.

But this modest proposal comes deferentially, because nobody else has more respect for the generosity the Mohegan Tribe has shown our corner of the world for decades now than your humble narrator. And it’s important that there’s some kind of return on investment for very community-minded people.

In that spirit, I’d like the Mohegans to consider buying (and subsequently running) Dodd Stadium.

Dan Drainville reported in Tuesday’s edition of The Day that the Norwich City Council will soon decide whether to sell the crumbling, 30-year-old Grande Dame. The council was scheduled to hear a resolution that would authorize City Manager John Salomone to place the stadium on the market with

Colliers, at a price the commercial real estate firm recommends to the city.

The councilors moved a potential decision to the May 19 meeting, in order to “review all the information in order to make an intelligent decision,” Mayor Peter Nystrom said.

A more cynical fellow might say that it would be the first “intelligent decision” on Dodd Stadium in several years.

During the meeting, Nystrom said the stadium “needs lots of repairs,” which goes to dizzying levels to state the obvious, much like “many NBA players are tall” might. Norwich long ago abdicated its responsibility to maintain the ballpark properly, opting for the Band-Aid, not the tourniquet, to quell the hemorrhage(s). Now the place is falling down.

The news that the city might sell is both joyous and perilous. Joyous in the sense that private ownership would be willing to do more than Norwich’s penchant for the minimum daily requirement. Perilous in the sense that private ownership might use the space for something else and end baseball here.

Enter the Mohegans. There’s no better entity to engage in modern, creative, strategic thinking aimed at producing more uses and revenue streams. They’ll dispatch all the previous aspersions about the ballpark’s location and to finally stop pigeonholeing its use as a mere baseball stadium. The Mohegans could turn Dodd Stadium into a multi-purpose facility that could generate revenue.

The Mohegans, once infrastructure repairs are complete, should keep the Sea Unicorns, the primary baseball tenant and glittering example of affordable family entertainment. They might also consider installing synthetic turf, instantly making Dodd a more multi-purpose facility. The stadium could become the place where schools from the Eastern Connecticut Conference played their league tournaments in several sports as well as a rental facility for AAU tournaments in baseball, soccer, lacrosse and a number of other events.

“Turfing the field would allow for more community types of events," Sea Unicorns general manager Lee Walter said last year as whispers of a potential stadium sale began. “You can have a carnival on a turf field without the worry of destroying it. You can have more concerts and graduations. If a grass field gets ruined by a carnival or other type of event like that, you’re paying a lot of money to fix that. A turf field would be for sports other than baseball, too. I know soccer has been played here in the past. We could bring in lacrosse."

This is where the Mohegans could get their return. AAU tournaments and sport camps all but print money. The Mohegans have experience here, annually turning the convention center into several volleyball courts for an AAU extravaganza.

There are also outdoor concerts to consider — and Mohegan has the best talent attractor in the country in Tom Cantone, the Senior Vice President for Sports & Entertainment. The concept of an outdoor concert with a brand name on a beautiful summer night should get us giddy. Lest we forget, too, that the Mohegans are plenty familiar with the area, with Mohegan Sun Country Club but 5.5 miles away from the ballpark.

New ownership would be a refreshing shift from leadership-through-complaint we’ve witnessed for several years now.

Noise, traffic, taxes. Taxes, traffic, noise. The Sea Unicorns’ rent doesn’t cover expenses. Wah, wah wah, all sounding like Charlie Brown’s teacher by now.

And nobody has ever done a thing to create new revenue streams. To wit: Why do other sports venues in the state bear corporate names (Dunkin’ Park, the XL Center, Total Mortgage Arena) but it’s the same old Dodd Stadium here? This just in: Corporate naming comes with corporate dollars.

Dodd Stadium has suffered from the same people making the same decisions. Or not making them. It is time for new ideas. People with backgrounds in business and marketing, brainstorming new methods of potential use, revenue streams and sharing.

To me, that begins and ends with the Mohegans.