Bloomington’s Junior College Looking at Minor League Baseball Stadium, Too

When I told an astute observer of McHenry County politics that another friend of McHenry County Blog had sent me a Bloomington Pantagraph article about Heartland Community College’s welcoming a minor league baseball stadium on its campus, here was the reaction:

“I think the baseball teams have figured out that the junior colleges are suckers.

“They have the money, the land and the willingness to spend the taxpayers’ money.”

But the price mentioned in the article is so, so much less than the McHenry County College extravaganza.

Heartland President Jon Astroth said $3.6 million was available for its sports complex, only part of which will be for baseball and softball.

MCC, on the other hand, is budgeting over $13 million (plus high interest costs, because it will be a for-profit venture), maybe a lot more than $13 million.

The McLean County effort is before the Normal City Council.

But the vision is so, so different.

“The vision today is a baseball stadium at Heartland funded by a private investor,”

Alan Sender, a community member investigating the possibility, is quoted in reporter Mary Ann Ford’s article.

Other comments from Sender:

“While Sender said the group doesn’t want anything from the town now, if the idea become reality, the town might be asked to provide turn lanes or stoplights near the facility.

“’This is not a town of Normal project and it’s not envisioned to be a Heartland project,’ he said. It depends entirely on a private investor.’”

The proposal sounds more like the privately-financed one planned for Harvard than the 4-vote MCC majority wants to build in Crystal Lake’s watershed.

The Harvard one, you will remember, was well under way, but not announced until this story in McHenry County Blog the day before the MCC board approved the tax-subsidized deal with baseball promoter Pete Heitman.

I still wonder at the underhandedness of the board’s refusal to let the public—not to mention potential competitors like Bill Larsen and Chris Diserio—make an alternative proposal.

Maybe that’s OK in private business, but junior colleges are not private businesses.


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