FRESNO DESK - Take a hike! That's the message a majority of city voters sent the Fresno Grizzlies in a new College Poll released yesterday.

On Thursday afternoon, about 800 people showed up for free hot dogs and pepsi in a stage managed Fresno Courthouse Park 'rally' of stadium supporters. Grizzlies officials were disappointed at the lack of attendance at the publicity event. Public support is clearly not in the Grizzlies corner.

The College Poll showed that if giving the Grizzlies the $8.5 million grant from City Hall were the only way to keep the Grizzlies from moving the team out of town, 56% of the voters would oppose the City Council making such a gift for a stadium constructed in Fresno's delapidated Downtown Mall. Another 38% favored building a stadium, but not in the proposed location, and 6% had no opinion, at all.

The support for a Fresno Grizzly stadium is slightly stronger among the few who claim to be Giants fans — 34% said they would support giving the team the $8.5 million grant of taxpayers money to help build a private for profit sports stadium to keep the team from leaving the Fresno. But 51% of the voters who claim to be Giant's fans said they oppose the proposed grant to profit making investors, and 15% had no opinion.

In other findings, 65% also said the people should have a vote on whether to spend public funds for a private for profit Grizzlies baseball stadium. And 35% said the Fresno City Council should not fund the proposed Grizzlies

The poll found that 65% of voters would oppose the City Council, the County Supervisors, and the Fresno County Office of education financing the building of a stadium for the Grizzlies on the Downtown Fresno Mall.

The poll result were released on Thursday as Grizzlies owners and team backers were stepping up their grumbling about Fresno mayor Sunny Jim Patterson's opposition to a publicly financed privately owned Grizzlies baseball stadium.

Supporters of the stadium have repeatedly threatened that if the City Council and the County government doesn't come up with the money to start construction on the proposed stadium by September 1, 1998, Fresno will lose the Grizzlies.

Giving Patterson the benefit of the doubt, he makes a persuasive case in opposing building a stadium that has no long term economic benefit and makes no reasonable contribution to the economic development of the community.

[The CSU Fresno Opinion Poll of 802 city voters was conducted between July 11-28, 1998 and has a margin of error of 5.0 percentage points.]