Again, I can’t find the story on the N&R Web site, but there was a big-front-pager on yesterday’s sports section on the city’s controversial plan to renovate 84-year-old War Memorial Stadium.
Pretty run of the mill article, but it did have an interesting quote from John Hughes, the city’s manager of youth and community programs:
(Hughes) oversees the operation of the stadium and believes the overall condition isn’t as bad as it may appear.
“The field is in excellent shape, Hughes said. “The stadium itself, it has issues, but it’s still very much in shape. It’s not going to fall down.”
That’s an interesting comment when contrasted with John Hammer’s coverage of the issue.
The city staff has tried hard to get people to say that the stadium is unsafe and needs to be demolished, but in the last report the City Council received, the concrete experts said that the biggest danger right now is that a piece of loose concrete might fall on someone’s head. Loose concrete can be removed and replaced. You don’t have to tear down a historic building because some of the concrete has deteriorated. The concrete experts also said that the stadium was not going to collapse any time soon, which was the impression the city staff wanted people to have.
According to city staff, in 2004 it was safe to have 7,000 baseball fans at the stadium, but in 2005, when the new stadium opened, World War Memorial Stadium was dangerous and most of it needed to be torn down.
