The latest bad news about Memorial Stadium should – it probably won’t, but it should – move the county to reconsider its stadium and baseball park plans. As we’ve written before, an opportunity to solve two problems at once is at hand. Lots of people want the Charlotte Knights to move to a new ballpark downtown, but lawsuits over the complicated land-swaps proposed to facilitate putting the park in Third Ward — and gripes about using land previously designated for a large uptown park — have kept the Knights in Fort Mill. Meanwhile, the county is sitting on the Memorial Stadium land, the stadium is a wreck, and will cost nearly a million dollars to repair. It was a fine stadium for a long time, and is a great historical relic, but it’s not worth the price it’ll take to fix it. At one point, the county considered using Memorial Stadium’s land for the baseball park, until someone figured out a way for Uptown big wheels to make more money. But the deal cobbled together by Center City Partners is going nowhere, and Memorial Stadium is in limbo. It’s time now to reconsider the Memorial Stadium option for baseball. Now, will someone on the commission please put 2 and 2 together? Maybe county manager Harry Jones could claim he thought of a great way to save the county money and bring baseball downtown, and incidentally save his skin after his recent controversies.
This article appears in Nov 10-16, 2009.
Yea Grooms. Let’s tear down everything that’s not to Your specs. Dude.. You’re off your meds. Serious planners don’t tear down, they build around.. that’s how great cities are built. By leaving what’s there there. Stop trying to Disney-up The Queen and just leave something with roots for the next generation.