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Fox Cities Stadium Celebrates Tenth Anniversary
by Bob
Lowe
May 3, 2004
It was 10 years ago, in April 1995, that the new home of the
Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, a Class A affiliate of the Seattle
Mariners Major League Baseball team, moved into its new home
at 2400 N. Casaloma Dr., next to U.S. 41, just north of the
Fox River Mall in Grand Chute. No one would have dared predicted
at the time what an enormous economic impact the 5,500-seat
$5 million Fox Cities Stadium would have had on the region.
Owned
and managed by the Fox Cities Sports Authority, a private
nonprofit group, the stadium has become much more than a place
to watch the Timber Rattlers play baseball. "Our objective
was to have a place that would be good for the community and
a great place for families to enjoy affordable entertainment,"
said Stan Baehman, Fox Cities Sports Authority president.
Fox
Cities Stadium has become a popular venue for several sports
and entertainment events like the Brett Favre Celebrity Softball
Challenge, the annual Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletics
Association boys’ state baseball tournament, the NCAA
Division III Baseball Championship and entertainers as varied
as the Beach Boys, the Moody Blues, Michael Bolton, the band
Chicago and the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra.
This
year, the Allman Brothers Band is scheduled to perform there
on July 17 as part of the Great Fox Cities Celebration. Fox
Cities Stadium is where Secretary of State Colin Powell gave
his speech on volunteerism. Its where RCA Recording artist,
Clay Aiken, runner-up in Fox TV’s second American Idol
competition, will perform on Saturday July 10. The parking
lot will open at 3 p.m. and the stadium gates at 5 p.m. The
show gets underway at 7 p.m.
"I
would definitely call it a key attraction for the area,"
said Pam Seidl, marketing communications manager for the Fox
Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau. In its first nine seasons,
the stadium has attracted more than 215,898 fans to watch
Timber Rattlers baseball games. Prior to its construction,
the Appleton Foxes, forerunner of the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers,
used to play at Goodland Field on W. Spencer Street in Appleton.
That aging, 54-year-old facility was badly in need of renovation.
The sports authority decided it wouldn’t be financially
feasible to spend $1.5 million to renovate the 54-year-old
stadium, which has since undergone a facelift of its own and
is now the site of the Nienhaus Youth Sports Complex. The
$5 million to build the stadium came from private donations,
companies and individuals, as well as through loans. No public
funds were used. The land was purchased from Outagamie County
through a $400,000 grant provided by the Fox Cities Convention
and Visitors Bureau.
Fox
Cities Stadium is only one of several excellent sporting facilities
available to sports minded residents here in northeast Wisconsin.
The area also contains the USA Youth Sports Complex in Appleton,
where a second Babe Ruth baseball field is to be built. The
new field will be called Alex Rodriguez Field, after the famed
New York Yankees third baseman who got his professional start
in 1994 as a member of the Appleton Foxes.
Memorial
Park in Appleton has six lighted softball diamond and one
lighted baseball diamond. Kaukauna has the Wisconsin International
Raceway with a seating capacity of 20,000. For ice skating
enthusiasts, there is the 1,000-seat Tri County Ice Arena
and the Appleton Family Ice Center with seating for 650.
On
the drawing board is a $3 million 68,00 square foot indoor
sports complex planned for the Town of Vandenbroek, on Appleton’s
far northeast side. To be called Player’s Choice, it
is set to open by mid October and will contain facilities
for indoor baseball, flag football, basketball, golf, volleyball,
soccer, lacrosse and inline hockey. Player’s Choice
is the brainchild of Mike Lichtfuss and his partner Kelly
Sperl and could attract up to 450,000 visitors annually. It
will employ seven full-time staffers and 20 part-timers and
will include a full-service café and 16 large-screen
TV sets plus a stadium sound system and conference/party room.
Player’s Choice will be among 50 facilities in the country
that use the Pro Batter Professional pitching system.
***
Appleton Mayor Tim Hanna was asked in a recent Post-Crescent
interview what are among his top priorities for his next four
years. His answer: "I’ve got a long list. Since
the (1,000 acre) Purdy annexation, we’ve got two more
sizable annexations coming on the north side. Our challenge
is working through all the issues with those developers. Long
range planning is something we have to make a priority. The
state is requiring a comprehensive land use plan that has
to meet certain guidelines and be adopted by 2010. Our downtown
planing has been very successful, but we need to do a next
generation plan for the downtown.
"There
are a lot of things happening on the riverfront. We are close
to an extension on a lease with the Appleton Yacht Club. We
are looking at trail development between Heritage and Lutz
parks. The completion of the Heritage Park and Paper Industry
International Hall of Fame and office complex will take place
this year. The WE Energies cleanup will take place this year.
We are getting ready to prepare a request for proposals for
development at the Valmet site. You’ve got cleanup at
the M&I Drilling site and Fox River Locks issues. It’s
all coming at us.
"We
have had several meetings with the Town of Harrison and Calumet
County over some tough issues in terms of current and future
traffic flow, including the intersection of Coop Road and
County KK and the extension of Eisenhower Drive and Midway
Road. That all needs to take place so development occurs in
the best possible way.
"Regional
cooperation is something I’m excited about, but discussion
needs to take place before a neutral party, which I think
we’ve found in the League of Women Voters. We’ve
approached them to host a meeting among local municipalities
just to open communication, to celebrate past regional cooperation
and to look at other areas we could explore.
"I’ve
been actively involved with the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities
developing a proposal that shared revenue be done on a more
regional basis so here is a reward for work done on a regional
economic basis. I think that regionalization is the future
of local government. That’s how we are going to succeed."
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