For the past two years, the city of Evansville and its residents have been at each other's throats on what to do with Roberts Stadium. The outrage and outcry has been sparked by our city leaders who have admitted that they have no ideas for Roberts Stadium. They've arrived at this point because part of them doesn't care (it only took me a few months to round up possible tenants for Roberts Stadium), and the other part of them just doesn't have the talent to figure out what to do. If your city leaders aren't confident in what to do, how can we expect our residents to be confident in government?
Nothing is more detrimental to a city than a civil war, which is what we are witnessing as our own residents and politicians are more worried about how to defeat their neighbor than St. Louis, Nashville, Louisville, or Indianapolis. As we've watched the St. Louis area build three arenas, Nashville reuse their Civic Auditorium, Louisville keep Freedom Hall, and Indianapolis convert their old Bush Stadium to an apartment complex for their new tech park, we are fighting pointless and unnecessary battles such as the Ford Center vs Roberts Stadium, Roberts Stadium vs the ball fields project, and Roberts Stadium vs a new park.
If you think it's bad now, just wait until you see the next battle brewing on the horizon. What is this next battle? Will it be as bad as the current battle to save Roberts Stadium? The answer is yes, and this battle has laid dormant since 2003 but is slowly coming back to life.
It's been 8 years since then mayor Russ Lloyd Jr. proposed building a new ballpark in downtown Evansville...
http://saverobertsstadium.blogspot.com/2011/06/now-you-will-know-rest-of-story.html
Truthfully, if the new downtown ballpark would have been built no one knows what would have happened to Bosse Field. Would it have been allowed to coexist with the new ballpark? Would city hall accept it not being a huge cash cow? Would city hall have tried to demolish it? These are all questions I would like to have answered myself as I am a strong proponent of a new downtown ballpark but only if it does not affect Bosse Field.
Although city hall never had to make a decision on Bosse Field since the new downtown ballpark plan failed and the Otters were left intact, we are still very slowly creeping towards the day when a decision will have to be made on how to keep Bosse Field and the Otters successful.
For those who have been following this blog, you will recall last summer that I talked about the struggles the Otters are facing due to our inability to improve the conditions around Bosse Field...
http://saverobertsstadium.blogspot.com/2011/07/cause-effect-chain-of-events.html
Indeed, these problems are starting to build up on the Otters who have served our town well for 16 years now...
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2011/jul/02/more-than-a-night-at-the-ballpark/
"But the Otters have faced plenty of challenges, too — obstacles that go way beyond having a player turn in his uniform before a road trip. Bussing said financial losses are increasingly difficult to withstand, especially since the economy nose-dived in 2008."
With or without a new downtown ballpark, the time to act now to preserve Bosse Field and our Otters franchise is NOW. We cannot afford to sit idle and leave the Otters on an island. I am fully committed to fighting for the Otters, the Garvin Park community, and Kleymeyer Park and I hope you are as well as I believe that they should be included in our goal of saving Roberts Stadium. How can we do this? Let's go step-by-step.
1. If we raise the floor at Roberts Stadium, we will have approximately 5,000 to 6,000 seats from Roberts Stadium that will need to be removed. These seats need to be immediately acquired by the ECVB and sent to Kleymeyer Park to be included in a ball fields project.
These fields need to be designed to replicate vintage MLB ballparks like the company Big League Dreams does: http://www.bigleaguedreams.com/replica-fields
Once we commit to building these fields at Kleymeyer and with the MLB design, we need to reach out to Don Mattingly and Major League Baseball for their cooperation in this project. This move will pay huge dividends for our project as it will make the project affordable, will bring national recognition to it, and will tie the project to nearby Bosse Field, the third oldest active ballpark in the nation.
2. Once we commit to building the ball fields, which will already be cheaper and affordable at Kleymeyer Park, we then bring Bosse Field and the Evansville Otters into the equation.
For all of our big tournaments that will consist of multiple traveling teams, we play the championship game at Bosse Field. This will work for the following reasons...
A. The tournament games will bring in sponsors who want to place ads inside Bosse Field during the games. We should give this revenue to the Otters as we will have our own sponsors back at our ball fields at Kleymeyer Park.
B. The Otters will be able to use the concession stands at Bosse Field during the games to increase revenue for the organization. On days when the Otters are on the road, these concession stands sit idle. Why don't we maximize their effectiveness?
C. Otters ticket sales will increase. Tourists who come to town to play in the tournaments at the ball fields can enjoy an Otters baseball game at historic Bosse Field and the Otters, we already have that.
D. Development will come. One of the main reasons that the idea of building 8 ball fields was ever pursued was the fact that these fields can bring economic development to their surrounding neighborhood. Unlike the Roberts Stadium lot, which is sensitive to Wesselman Woods and landlocked, Kleymeyer and Garvin Parks desperately need a wave of urban renewal and new development.
If you check out Wrigley Field with the Chicago Cubs, Camden Yards with the Baltimore Orioles, and Fenway Park with the Boston Red Sox, you will see that revitalizing old warehouses, buildings, and houses helps bring fans to your ballpark. What does Bosse Field have around it? Answer: two warehouses, old buildings, and North Main Street, ALL OF WHICH desperately need an economic stimulus like the ball fields project.
To surround Bosse Field with ample retail and entertainment, we need to get GAGE and our city leaders to pursue organizations such as the following...
1. Frontier League headquarters
2. Old Spaghetti Factory
3. Louisville Bat Factory Museum
4. Kunkel Group- Condos
5. Major League Baseball- Women's Baseball Museum
Once development around Bosse Field starts to occur, the Otters will bring in more fans who want to try out the new amenities. After all, wasn't Main Street revitalization one of the main reasons why we built the Ford Center?
3. After we have built the ball fields at Kleymeyer Park, designed them to replicate vintage MLB ballparks, and set up the championship games at Bosse Field on off days for Otters, then the rest of our city can grow without the fear of destroying the Otters, Bosse Field, and the surrounding neighborhood at the same time.
If/when we do bring in a A or AA team to a downtown ballpark (which needs to go on the Mulzer Stone lot), the only thing we will need to make sure is that there is an ordinance forbidding the Otters and the A/AA team from playing on the same day unless it is against each other.
Outside of that, both areas will prosper as they will tailor to separate markets. With extra revenue from sponsors, concession stand sales, ticket sales, and merchandise sales, we won't have to worry about the Otters struggling year after year to stay out of the red. And we won't have to worry about Bosse Field which will be filled daily with Otters games, traveling tournament games, or high school baseball games. We can do all of that while allowing our city to grow at the same time.
For these reasons, we must do this right the first time by being proactive. To pull all of this off, it involves a lot of moving parts but it is certainly worth it as our whole city will benefit for years to come as that dark cloud of the 50 year old pall over Evansville will begin to vanish.
Don't just save Roberts Stadium, SAVE ROBERTS STADIUM AND BOSSE FIELD!
(usgennet.org)
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