Interesting that Mayor Allen Joines is the point man in today’s Journal article breaking the bad news that there will be no downtown baseball in Winston-Salem until 2009:
Fans of the Winston-Salem Warthogs will have to wait until at least 2009 to watch baseball downtown.
The developers of a proposed $189 million stadium and retail-office development now plan to open the stadium in time for the Warthogs’ 2009 season, officials have confirmed. The original goal was to open the stadium in 2008.
“We had hopes to build and make the ’08 season,” Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines said Friday. “But it’s just not possible, so it took some of the pressure off.”
Joines said that the developers hope to start construction on the stadium in June.
Billy Prim, the project’s lead developer and co-owner of the Warthogs, recently said that construction on the stadium would start in late spring or early summer. He has said that construction will take 12 to 14 months.
Prim has not offered a similar timeline for the accompanying development planned at the ballpark complex.
Prim did not return calls for comment Friday.
Kind of gives you the impression that the city is partner in the stadium deal. That’s right, it is.
