By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – The City of Port Angeles, along with the Port Angeles Lefties of the West Coast League, are part of eleven communities with Minor League and West Coast League Stadiums.
The baseball teams and their communities are requesting that Governor Inslee approve a one-time “Minor League Baseball Publicly Owned Stadium Improvement Fund.” This funding would distribute a total of $24 million to the 11 community stadiums, including Port Angeles’ Civic Field, to be used for critically needed infrastructure improvements.
The funding would be distributed based on the stadium improvement needs in each community. The State funds would be combined with local and team funds to complete their projects.
It’s not a new idea. State funding of publicly owned minor league baseball stadiums has been going on for a long time throughout the country. In 2006, the Washington Legislature provided $18 million for improvements to minor league stadiums.
City Parks and Recreation Director Corey Delikat says he doesn’t yet know what our cut of the $24 million would be, but he knows what the funds would be used for at Civic Stadium.
“You know, there’s a lot more that we could do. I mean, we still have a wish list from a report that we did in 2010, that we continue to work off of. It’d be great to upgrade the dugouts and the locker rooms and things like that, the concession stand. But the main two things we’re really focused on is safety and a new scoreboard. We want to do a video board. And so, we wanted to redo a lot of the backstopping with netting, and do some netting on the stadium side to prevent foul balls from screaming up into stands.”
Delikat says if they aim too high, they’ll have to somehow come up with their own cash, so they’re starting off modestly. On the other hand, if the Governor signs on, it could open the door to new revenue streams.
“We could use this money to leverage other grants as well, and that’s kind of the exciting part. You know, if we get x amount of dollars, we can leverage that to grants. There’s a bond issue that’s coming off of old Qwest Stadium from Seattle, that there’s going to be funding available for the communities that have athletic fields. So there’s going to be some options if we receive this money to kind of utilize different ways to help boost that amount of money we get to get additional projects done.”
Mayor Kate Dexter is expected to sign a letter of support for the project that will be forwarded to the Governor.