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Much of my community is really sad tonight, and I’m really sad on their behalf. For the past four or five years or so, one of the biggest local issues has been whether we can “Save Civic Stadium,” the old baseball park next to D’s high school, in prime real estate just south of downtown. The local minor league team had started sharing the UO’s fancy new ball park over by the UO football stadium, and nobody had been using Civic.
The school district, which owns the land, took bids, and there were three: (1) save the historic old grandstand and make a small city park and add a soccer field for Kidsports, the local nonprofit that runs most of the kids’ extramural sports teams; (2) let the YMCA move there since its space (on the other side of the high school) has become too small; or (3) bulldoze it and let Fred Meyer build a department store there. Although it’s several miles to the nearest Freddie’s, most people (including me) were adamantly against that option and favored either (1) or (2). Then the YMCA negotiated to get a new space elsewhere, and the school district and the city council came up with some plan that if enough financial backing could be found, (1) could happen. And they did! Several local business owners generously donated quite a lot of money, and against all the odds, Civic Stadium was saved.
Until this evening, when it burned down.
Some people playing baseball at the high school saw a small fire near the press box, and they also saw four middle school kids bicycling away across the parking lot. Related? Not? I don’t know. A great many firefighters came right away, but within minutes the flames were twice as high as the grandstand! The nearby houses were evacuated (my friend Marie once lived right across the street, in a beautiful old house, when we were 19). No one was hurt.
So a great many people are heartbroken, and I feel so sad for them. I also can’t help but think that if the old wooden grandstand was as combustible as all that, it could be a blessing that it went now, rather than risking all the lives of some future day’s sports spectators. I hope they’ll envision and carry out some new plan to keep the land focused on the kids.
The school district, which owns the land, took bids, and there were three: (1) save the historic old grandstand and make a small city park and add a soccer field for Kidsports, the local nonprofit that runs most of the kids’ extramural sports teams; (2) let the YMCA move there since its space (on the other side of the high school) has become too small; or (3) bulldoze it and let Fred Meyer build a department store there. Although it’s several miles to the nearest Freddie’s, most people (including me) were adamantly against that option and favored either (1) or (2). Then the YMCA negotiated to get a new space elsewhere, and the school district and the city council came up with some plan that if enough financial backing could be found, (1) could happen. And they did! Several local business owners generously donated quite a lot of money, and against all the odds, Civic Stadium was saved.
Until this evening, when it burned down.
Some people playing baseball at the high school saw a small fire near the press box, and they also saw four middle school kids bicycling away across the parking lot. Related? Not? I don’t know. A great many firefighters came right away, but within minutes the flames were twice as high as the grandstand! The nearby houses were evacuated (my friend Marie once lived right across the street, in a beautiful old house, when we were 19). No one was hurt.
So a great many people are heartbroken, and I feel so sad for them. I also can’t help but think that if the old wooden grandstand was as combustible as all that, it could be a blessing that it went now, rather than risking all the lives of some future day’s sports spectators. I hope they’ll envision and carry out some new plan to keep the land focused on the kids.