Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 20, 1994 TAG: 9407200101
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Gentlemen, start your engines.
Bids for grading and construction for the new Salem baseball field will be going out shortly in the wake of Tuesday's referendum in which voters overwhelmingly approved the project. Once the bids are in, the first step will be to fire up the heavy machinery and move some dirt.
``The game plan is to do the site work first so that we can be assured of having a good playing surface for the opening of the [Carolina League] season in April of 1995,'' said Salem Mayor Jim Taliaferro, who spearheaded the drive for a new facility to replace elderly and inadequate Municipal Field. ``We intend to build from the top down in order to give the field time to mature.``
Taliaferro said the only thing that would have surprised him about Tuesday's vote was a rejection of the new stadium.
``The most often-asked question to me was why did we go to the trouble to have a referendum to begin with?'' the mayor said.
Although Salem officials had the option of following the directive of the referendum or not, Taliaferro sounded like a man who would have been reluctant to overrule the voters.
``I think you'd be a fool if you did,'' he said. ``Why go to the trouble and expense of a referendum if you weren't going to go along with it? If the voters had said they didn't want the stadium, it would have been fine with me.''
Bids for grading and construction will go out separately.
``The grading will probably begin within 30 days,'' Taliaferro said. ``I'd like to think that we'll get the bids for construction by Sept.1, although that'll put a strain on the midnight oil of the architects.''
The architectural work by the firm of Kinsey Shane and Associates has not been completed.
Elsewhere, reaction to the ``yes'' vote followed predictable lines.
"I'm very excited; no doubt about it," Salem Buccaneers owner Kelvin Bowles said. "We're going to have to start planning right now to expand our operation. The city is planning to put a first-class facility in there, and we're planning on putting a first-class operation into it. "
Bowles said that he expected the Buccaneers' staff to at least double.
Bowles' enthusiasm was shared by Bucs general manager Sam Lazarro.
``Just looking at the plans [architects] Doc Shane and Bob Frye have put together, it's hard not to get excited about what this field contains that the old one lacks. It's a dream come true from a business sense.''
Business ought to boom next year, Taliaferro said.
``We think attendance is going to increase 50 percent, and that's conservative,'' he said. ``Some places that have had new ballparks have had attendance double in the first year.''
Conservative estimates were used throughout calculations on the economic impact of a new facility to the Roanoke Valley.
``I think it's going to be much better than portrayed,'' he said.
In any event, just looking at economic impact is a mistake, the mayor said.
``There's something else here, and that's quality of life,'' he said. ``People want to pin a dollar figure to everything. You take any civic center in the country and look at it that way and you've got a loser.''
There seems little question that the quality of at least some lives will change.
``This is like Christmas in July for me,'' said the Bucs' Brian Hoffman, whose 20 years on the job make him the dean of Carolina League scorekeepers. ``I spend half my summer at the ballpark. If the new stadium is like the architect's drawings, then it will be very exciting for me.''
Perhaps most thrilling of all will be moving out of Municipal Field's hot and obstructed-view press box.
``I'll miss Municipal Field, but I won't miss not being able to see fly balls,'' Hoffman said.
Most of the current Buccaneers will not play in the new stadium. That brought something of a wistful response from catcher Marcus Hanel, who has spent parts of three seasons at Municipal.
``This place is old and kind of a dungeon,'' he said. ``A new ballpark is going to make it a whole new ballgame around here. I wish people here could see what new parks have done for [league members] Frederick and Wilmington. In the long run, a new ballpark is going to pay for itself.''
by CNB