News-Record.com

Sunday's editorial.

Slowly and silently, War Memorial Stadium is dying.

The lovable concrete-and-wood relic on Yanceyville Street is struggling to keep its feet as weather, neglect and age take their toll. Cracks and chips have spread on its walls and floors and some of its brightly painted folding seats have come unhinged.

We all knew the historic, city-owned facility was in bad shape. But not this bad.

The city’s original plans to keep the stadium intact and in use won’t be enough, engineers say. Even if the city invests an estimated $3 million to $4 million in the 82-year-old structure, that would buy it only another 10 to 15 years of life.

The stadium isn’t just a monument, by the way. It also hosts 200 baseball games a year as an invaluable Parks & Recreation Department venue. In addition, it is N.C. A&T’s home baseball field, as well as Greensboro College’s.

As importantly, it is viewed by residents of the Aycock Historic District as a centerpiece of their community and a key ingredient to revitalization there. If only warm feelings were dollar bills ... .

Hard choices
What now? For the hefty sum of as much as $4 million, the city could patch the cracks with makeshift fixes to buy time, but what would be the point?
Or the city could go to the voters again in a bond referendum, and ask them to invest in costly stadium upgrades. But they’ve said no twice before, and in a tight economy, the expenditure could be a hard sell.

What the city definitely should not do is demolish the storied ball field, which is one of the oldest in the country and which is dedicated to World War I veterans.

There is another option. What if we looked at the project as a ball park in the truest sense, not as a stadium? What if we kept and restored the historic facade but rebuilt the crumbling innards of War Memorial for a fraction of the cost restoration would entail?

And what if we redesigned the stadium’s interior not only as a place for college and recreational baseball games, with smaller, more intimate seating, but for outdoor concerts and community festivals?

City Councilman Robbie Perkins is pushing such a plan and sees it as the solution to several needs in the city. His idea: Use the $1.5 million already earmarked for stadium repairs toward those efforts. Pair the stadium upgrade with a bigger, better Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, which would move from across Yanceyville Street.

While he’s at it, Perkins should push to expand the boundaries of downtown to include the complex and the Aycock neighborhood as key attractions. This would officially bring one of the city’s most vibrant old neighborhoods into downtown. It also would help erase the invisible wall between downtown and east Greensboro.

'Grab things by the throat’Whatever expenses exceed the current money on hand, Perkins says, could be paid for with two-thirds bonds, which don’t require voter approval. Perkins believes the city needs to move fast on the plan and can’t afford to wait for another voter bond referendum. “This town will fail if we don’t start getting some things done,” Perkins said last week. “If you go down to Charlotte, they grab things by the throat and make ’em happen.”

Perkins has a point. But the buy-in approval at the polls could generate would be a healthier, if slower, approach. After all, what’s not to like?

Consider one unlikely pair of bedfellows who already say they like the concept.
“I’m tired of looking at the stadium as a single unit,” stadium proponent David Hoggard, who also is chairman of the Parks and Recreation Commission, said last week. “The whole area needs to be looked at.”

“It would be used just as much if not more,” Joseph M. Bryan Foundation President Jim Melvin said of remaking War Memorial’s stands into a smaller configuration. Melvin spearheaded construction of the new downtown stadium, NewBridge Bank Park, which Hoggard opposed.
The total price tag would comprise a fraction of the cost of repairing the stadium as is. The signature facade and the tribute to veterans would remain. The Farmers Market, the Aycock neighborhood and downtown would benefit. The city could seize the chance to build community and a new park at the same time.

And suddenly, a worrisome old problem becomes a promising new opportunity.