While both sides declared Menino's plans for a citywide parking surcharge all but dead in the water, Cellucci said he's prepared to support a more surgical, game-day parking fee near the ballpark.

Moreover, Cellucci said he would support a special Fenway sales and meals tax district, with the revenues diverted to the city, and the collection of authorized but uncharged Hub hotel taxes to help offset Boston's $ 110 million investment in the project.

Emerging from the political rubble left in the wake of a three-day flareup between Cellucci and Menino, a City Hall emissary said the mayor may be ready to talk business with the governor.

"The city needs a revenue stream of $ 9 million a year to support the $ 110 million it has offered to the Red Sox," said Menino's chief of staff, James Rooney. "If the governor has a menu of fees or taxes he is proposing that would give the city its $ 9 million, I'm sure the mayor would be willing to listen."

Rooney added that "we know that a (citywide) parking fee can handle that easily."

But Cellucci maintained his forceful opposition to such a plan, promising a certain veto. "When I say it's unacceptable, it's pretty clear," the governor said.

With talks broken down between City Hall and the Red Sox, Cellucci has sought to jumpstart the process and take control of the project's future before time runs out on Beacon Hill.

While Menino apparently received a vote of support for the parking fee in a meeting yesterday with Senate President Thomas F. Birmingham, City Hall sources grudgingly acknowledged that Cellucci's opposition likely kills any chance of it getting approved in an election year.

"If the parking issue is not one that people want to deal with, the city can accept that," said one source. "But the easy place to be is saying no to things."

Still, Cellucci's move yesterday puts nearly $ 9 million in annual revenue for the city on the table. And that doesn't include revenue from a $ 72 million parking garage, which Cellucci says should be the cornerstone of any public financing for the $ 627 million ballpark.

"There's a solution at hand if these people would open their eyes and look at it," said Cellucci, whose staff is drawing up a measure to enable the garage deal. "I'm willing to file a bill once we're ready to go."

But in the same way Cellucci has blasted Menino's parking tax, the mayor still discounts the garage deal, which would call for either the state or the city to finance the construction.

"It's like putting a catcher in the pitcher's position," Menino said, adding that discussion of the plan is wasted effort with perilously little time left to act this year.

Factors including required debt service and the Red Sox' need to share in the revenue makes Cellucci's garage plan unworkable, Menino and others charge.

"I think it's time to get down to real business," Menino said. "Floating ideas, ideas that don't work, doesn't make a lot of sense."

Even as the seeds of a deal were sown, opposition to the financing schemes spread beyond community activists.

The Massachusetts Lodging Association has lashed out against tapping into a city wide hotel tax earmarked for the new Boston convention center, which would cost Hub hotels $ 2 million a year. That tax hike comes at a time when developers have been struggling to finance new hotels.

"Increasing the lodging tax to fund a ballpark which has little impact on this industry serves as another factor to scare off major hotel development companies," said David Gibbons, chief of the hotel industry group.

Faced with intensifying attacks by ballpark opponents, Red Sox executives yesterday touted a redesign of the proposed ballpark's Boylston Street facade, to make it more community friendly.

New plans call for the new stadium's longest side to be wrapped with glass and brick, boasting 150,000 square feet for shops and eateries, with cafe-style tables on wider, tree-lined sidewalks.