Fran Guminga,
> I was enjoying a good laugh or two about the "neighborhood ball parks" until
> I realized some people are getting serious.
I am totally and completely serious about putting a ball park near W.
Broadway and the river. I believe it would be great amenity.
Also, ballparks do not have to be hulking sports stadiums. One only has to
compare Midway Stadium to the Metrodome or to the Target Center. A outdoor
ballpark can fit well into a neighborhood. By comparison, Midway Stadium
fits in well with its surroundings and does not stick out like the Metrodome
or the Target Center, though, I have no complaints with the current
locations of the Metrodome and the Target Center.
Building a ballpark on the abandoned lots and scrapyards west of the river
would be a capital investment in north Minneapolis that you were bemoaning
the lack of. And regarding environmental issues, cleaning up the scrapyards
and industrial yards would provide an opportunity to perform environmental
clean up. Storm water retention ponds could be built and run-off from these
businesses could be built. If we as a neighborhood did have a say in the
design and building of the ballpark, as the ballpark advocates say we would,
then we would be able to design a ball park that is not a behemoth and that
is not surrounded by hard services such as parking lots. Who is to say that
we can not have a beautiful park surrounding this ball park. A park that
would restore at least part of Mississippi River front.
I, for one, am not convinced that removing the industrial scrapyards and
replacing them with a ballpark, in a park, is neglecting the river or the
historic or ecologically significance of the river. Rather, I see it as a
way to harness the value of the river in an environmentally sound matter.
Scott McGerik
Ward 3
Hawthorne
Minneapolis
www.visi.com/~scottlm/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
