MCC stadium out of play

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CRYSTAL LAKE – The minor league baseball stadium proposed for McHenry County College appears dead in the water, a college official said Monday.

“I’m not sure where the baseball thing is going,” College Board of Trustees Chairman George Lowe said. “I think it’s pretty much a dead issue.”

He made his statements a day before the college is slated to appeal to the Crystal Lake City Council its desire for the right to build on up to half of its land, and less than a week after an updated feasibility study was released stating that the revenue projections tied to the health and wellness and athletic complex were aggressive, but attainable.

A study of the complex, including a minor league baseball stadium, conducted by Economic Research Associates, suggests that while projected revenues are high and potential costs possibly higher, the combined stadium-fitness center potentially could pay for itself.

But that doesn’t mean the stadium is part of the picture any more, Lowe said.

“This is an update of what [ERA] provided us from before,” he said. “It’s only for the purpose of getting the numbers out and seeing where it is.

“There are a lot of numbers that need to be generated about the HWAC, because the health, wellness and athletic complex is still viable for the college,” Lowe continued. “It’s what we need; it’s part of the master plan.”

Last summer, college officials pitched a 95,000-square-foot complex, including a 6,500-seat minor league baseball stadium, on 44 acres of land on the Route 14 campus. City Council members voted, 4-3, in October in support of the plan, but the proposal failed to get the super-majority fifth vote it needed.

The proposal raised red flags from residents who were concerned about both the funding mechanism behind the project and its potential impact on the Crystal Lake watershed.

College officials pitched the nearly $30 million project as a public/private partnership, to be paid for through revenues from a semi-professional baseball team that would call the stadium home. But residents worried that the price tag would hit them in the pocket books if the stadium revenues fell flat.

“A lot of people don’t understand the good that can be accomplished” by a baseball team, baseball promoter F. Peter Heitman said Monday.

He declined to elaborate, but said the baseball dream was not dead for McHenry County.

Residents also raised questions about the impact the project would have on the city’s namesake lake. The college campus falls in the lake’s watershed, where strict city rules limited coverage to 20 percent impervious, or non-water soluble, surface.

The rules changed this summer, after an extensive review and redraft of the watershed ordinance, to permit additional coverage as long as engineering shows that the area will be protected.

The college is expected to appear before the City Council tonight to make a renewed pitch for the 50 percent impervious request – this time without any development plans in place. The city’s Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously endorsed the proposal late last month.

College spokeswoman Christina Haggerty said baseball could come up again someday, but it’s not on the drawing board right now.

“We have not taken it off the table, but we have not restarted any discussion on it,” she said. “I believe it would be treated as a whole new initiative with a whole new set of research behind it.

“We hope if it is something we decided to investigate again, we will, on the front end, involve the community in getting feedback.”