Monday, August 21, 2006
Butler’s Field of Dreams
The City of Butler is betting on a ball park to revitalize its downtown. The bet is $5 million dollars, to be exact, with half of that coming from public sources like the Redevelopment Capital budget. Oh, and they don’t even have a team committed to the stadium yet.
But why let that stand in the way of dreaming big, right? After all, look at all the wonderful things PNC Park has done for the North Shore. There are businesses there, but no one mentions that those businesses came from other locations, including Downtown Pittsburgh. Or that the parking garages are publicly built. The Mayor of Butler loves the fact that at PNC Park “people were eating out and paying to park”. Too bad she did not ask those folks where they were from or what they would be doing instead of spending money at the ball game. They likely would have been doing it somewhere else, and that other location suffers from the substitution spending effect.
Butler fashions its plans after Falconi Field in Washington County, even to the point where it will court the same baseball association, the unaffiliated Frontier League. To be sure, a lot of Falconi’s appeal is a combination of novelty, affordability, and proximity by interstate to points in Allegheny County and the high population portions of Washington. It is unclear how that mix will work if replicated in Downtown Butler.
As one observer put it, calling what Butler is doing a “crapshoot” insults the odds present in gambling. They had a minor league team before, and there is probably a reason they don’t any longer. The City ought to solicit the $2 million they will get from tax dollars from private donations who think the stadium is the right thing to do.
This dream, if acted upon, will become an embarrassing nightmare.
But why let that stand in the way of dreaming big, right? After all, look at all the wonderful things PNC Park has done for the North Shore. There are businesses there, but no one mentions that those businesses came from other locations, including Downtown Pittsburgh. Or that the parking garages are publicly built. The Mayor of Butler loves the fact that at PNC Park “people were eating out and paying to park”. Too bad she did not ask those folks where they were from or what they would be doing instead of spending money at the ball game. They likely would have been doing it somewhere else, and that other location suffers from the substitution spending effect.
Butler fashions its plans after Falconi Field in Washington County, even to the point where it will court the same baseball association, the unaffiliated Frontier League. To be sure, a lot of Falconi’s appeal is a combination of novelty, affordability, and proximity by interstate to points in Allegheny County and the high population portions of Washington. It is unclear how that mix will work if replicated in Downtown Butler.
As one observer put it, calling what Butler is doing a “crapshoot” insults the odds present in gambling. They had a minor league team before, and there is probably a reason they don’t any longer. The City ought to solicit the $2 million they will get from tax dollars from private donations who think the stadium is the right thing to do.
This dream, if acted upon, will become an embarrassing nightmare.
