While we're at it, I noticed sometime last fall that a development document for the Nicollet-Lake area included a one-block mini-stadium among numerous ideas for development in the area. As I recall, it was either on the same block, or one adjacent to it, as the old Miller ballpark.
Steve Brandt Kingfield
In Waukesha WI, investors are actually vying to pay the costs of a minor league baseball stadium. But, similar to our De La Salle controversy, opponents charge that a sports facility will change the character of a relatively new riverfront park.
Park leaders root for Waukesha to play ball By DARRYL ENRIQUEZ Milwaukee Sentinel Journal Online http://www.jsonline.com/news/wauk/jan05/291631.asp
Excerpts:
Waukesha - As competing baseball investors court Waukesha with expansion teams and promises of new stadiums, leaders of Wisconsin communities with hardball franchises say the city should swing a deal that could bring affordable fun, beer and hot dogs.
Investors are proposing to build multimillion-dollar, 4,000-seat stadiums in scenic Frame Park on the Fox River.
Team owners spend money to renovate or improve ball diamonds that cash-strapped communities cannot afford to upgrade. New stadiums, bleachers, clubhouses, field lights become city property, said Bob Berg, director of Parks and Recreation for La Crosse, home of the La Crosse Loggers, a Northwoods team.
In turn, local high schools and other leagues can use the improved facilities when the home team is out of town, he said.
Frame Park isn't the place for stadium by Laurel Walker Milwaukee Journal Sentinel http://www.jsonline.com/news/wauk/jan05/292519.asp
Excerpts:
Don Fundingsland is chairman of the Fox River Development Board, which has spent 13 years raising private funds and working with Waukesha officials to rejuvenate and rebuild Frame Park and the banks of the Fox River along several blocks through downtown.
A baseball stadium next to the park, Fundingsland said, "is inconsistent with what we had in mind, and with the design plan the city gave our board" when it began to raise private funds. In fact, there was plenty of talk of eliminating the existing ball diamond at Frame Park early on, but the controversial move was dropped until an alternative was available elsewhere, he said.
About $15 million has been invested in the riverwalk and park improvements, including a heavily used playground and a community hall built by the Rotary Club and donated to the city not far from the baseball field.
"I realize that others might come to a different conclusion," he said, "but somebody's got to speak for the park."
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