Maury Brown dropped a quick note to tell me that his interview with Lew Wolff was going to be up tonight. It’s now available. Brown covered a lot of ground with the interview. Wolff, for his part, tackled a couple of pressing topics, though he revealed nothing new about the transportation situation.

Regarding Scott Specialty Gases, Wolff said this:

The Scott Gas issue is one of relocation and not of a soil problem.

Where are those misinformed cries about toxic waste again?

Maury also had a really good question about how the ballpark deal was conceived:

BizBall: In your opinion, is the Ballpark Village concept a unique, large market opportunity, or do you think that this represents the future of stadium construction (and how to fund it), regardless of market size? Or, is it specific to a particular market and situation?

Wolff: Well, that’s a very astute question. I have to say that if a ballpark can be accommodated in the core of a community—in the urban area—I think that has lots of pluses. Like San Francisco, San Diego, some of those parks. In our case we had to sort of create an urban center for two reasons: one, to make it esthetically interesting. We don’t want the ballpark surrounded by parking. We want it to be, as we call it, ‘a sculpture within a project.’ And secondly, since we are not getting the traditional public assistance, we need to have ancillary development to help support the cost of the facility.

This goes back to the idea of creating somewhere out of nowhere. John King’s excellent two-part series in the Chronicle covers several urban-type developments in traditionally suburban areas, including some in the Bay Area. (I can already imagine the debate that will ensue.)