City Council Approves Junior College Baseball Stadium

In Normal.

That’s north of Bloomington.

Although the idea for a minor league baseball team surfaced in McLean County after it did in McHenry County, Heartland Community College is further along on the approval path than is McHenry County (Junior) College.

Here’s the story from the Peoria Journal Star story by Steve Stein.

“If a minor league team is found and private financing to build the stadium is obtained, construction plans would have to be submitted to the Normal Planning Commission and Town Council for approval,” Stein reports.

Here is the Pantagrpah story by Randy Reinhardt and Mikke Egenes.

Reinhardt and Egenes say that the Minnesota-based Northern League Commissioner Clark C. Griffith said,

”We could have a team and investors in place by May 2008. But the stadium takes time.”

Alan Sender, a local committee member observed, “(Griffith) is not the first person to say that it can be done in that period of time.”

The Pantagraph reports the franchise cost to be $1 million and the cost of the average stadium is $20 million and seats 6,000.

Previously, $3.6 million had been discussed for an entire athletic complex.

Joliet and Schaumburg have Northern League teams.

Sender said the only other “likely” league is the Frontier League, the one that MCC is dealing with.


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