That’s a lot of valuable real estate recently cleared.

My late father, an old Navy officer, knows all about things in the water and one of his favorite sayings was “if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.”

If you take a close look at a map that will be introduced as part of a City Council bill, you can see a lot of quacking going on at the corner of 15th and Montgomery.

UFO enthusiasts have Area No. 51 in the Nevada desert to point to as the center of a conspiracy theory. Temple’s on-campus stadium advocates now have Area No. 79.

150145 Map Set, As Introduced (1)

Area No. 79

Well, look at building No. 79 on this map of something Temple University is introducing in Philadelphia City Council. It is listed as a “proposed building.” That’s an awfully big “building” for that spot right at the corner of 15^th and Montgomery. There are three dates on that bill and the next time it is on the docket is for Sept. 30, 2015 which, in case you’ve noticed, is tomorrow. City Council Bill No. 15014500 looks like a you-know-what.

It’s not quite large enough for a stadium, but it is almost twice the size of the current Liacouras Center parking garage. Since the rumored stadium location is an east-west grid that includes Norris Park, Geasey Field, the tennis courts, the Student Pavilion, it looks like the “proposed building” is a parking garage for the new stadium. To me, it would make just as much sense to knock everything down from Montgomery North through Norris and put the stadium right there, but I’m not an urban planner.

Already, some land has been cleared as you can see from the above photo. A few months ago, the Triangle Apartments were knocked down at Broad and Norris, creating a lot of open space between Broad Street and, err, Area No. 79. Throw in the fact that the Student Pavilion is scheduled to be knocked down and that creates more space.

Some big contributors have said that they have been shown a mock drawing of a potential stadium. The rumor going around on Cherry and White Day was a Power 5 invitation was possible only when Temple announced an on-campus stadium.

Temple officials like athletic director Pat Kraft have been playing it coy, saying a stadium would be nice but it was above their heads. Maybe they were talking about the Board of Trustees; maybe it was City Council.

It’s certainly not a done deal yet, but it appears that people are at the table. Someday, someone is going to have to say what Area No. 79 is and that day could be closer than we think.