Cast your minds far, far back to the early days of Lake Olmstead Stadium. It seems like only yesterday that the very first pitch was thrown to inaugurate that ball field.

Looking at the big picture, it was practically yesterday -- 1995. Lake Olmstead Stadium turns only 13 years old next month. It's barely a teenager.

It's a fun place to watch a ball game or listen to an outdoor concert. There's plenty of room for parking. It hasn't even come close to outliving its usefulness. Indeed, Cal Ripken, the new owner of the Augusta GreenJackets baseball team, sunk $400,000 into the stadium to make it an even better park.

But there's still talk of building a new baseball stadium for the Jackets? Why?

The answer lies on the banks of the Savannah River. Sixteen acres of riverfront real estate comprise a site begging for redevelopment, after the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame and Gardens venture sputtered and died at that location recently.

A proposal spearheaded by Augusta Mayor Deke Copenhaver says the best shot in the arm for downtown development would be a 4,000-seat baseball stadium, surrounded by retail and office space, right on the river.

The state of Georgia controls the land now, and word is getting around that not only is the state having the land appraised, but it also is preparing to put feelers out for private buyers.

That means if the city wants the land for its stadium, it will have to outbid every single private buyer to get it. And since the state paid more than $275,000 an acre to buy the land more than a decade ago, you can expect a similar price for the land today.

But precisely how the city might get the property is immaterial to the primary issue -- what to do with the land if the city gets it.

A baseball stadium, surrounded by shops or not, shouldn't be considered an economic magic bullet that can be developed successfully with cookie-cutter consistency in just any city. The cities that do claim success erected their stadiums under such different circumstances from Augusta's that any favorable comparisons between them would be an apples-to-oranges exercise in futility.

Might residential use of the property be the best move? With the vagaries of the current housing market, it's an important question to ask. It certainly would be worth studying.

And that's all we're asking, really. Commission an objective, all-encompassing study that would examine every reasonable use for that riverside land.

Mayor Copenhaver, as much as we support him, has concluded that a baseball stadium -- which we already have -- is the best possible use for prime real estate on the banks of the Savannah -- riverfront land ripe for development in the city's core that few other cities in the world can boast. We just don't agree that the highest and best use of the land is for a baseball stadium -- which, incidentally, will keep that choice real estate off the tax rolls.

We wish the eager young mayor would have remained neutral on what the land should be used for and simply sought its development -- and been more open to a full range of ideas and uses.