McHenry County Blog

While we were at the Eagle Ridge Inn this past fall, the Telegraph Herald out of Dubuque ran an article about the Chicago couple’s attempt to turn the movie’s Field of Dreams into a 24-field youth baseball and sports complex.

Article about the Dyersville City Council approval of the Field of Dreams baseball and softball complex from the Telegraph Herald, September 9, 2012.

If that reminds anyone about the failed attempt to get the McHenry County Sports Complex off the ground, it probably should.

It’s not that the proposed Lakewood development would not have cost taxpayers money (although my request for what it did cost has not yet been fulfilled), but I don’t think that total amounted to what Oak Lawn couple Denise and Mike Stillman’s Go the Distance Baseball LLC proposal will cost taxpayers in Dyersville, Iowa.

The article said the All-Star ballpark Heaven got 3-1 approval from the Dyersvill City Council.

The cost to the city’s taxpayers?

$5.1 million in property tax rebates over 15 years.

The only person at the meeting, Pat Meinert, talked of agreement as “this elusive agreement that we’ve heard of for months,” but haven’t seen, according to the Telegraph Herald article.

Sounds pretty much like the Frontier League Baseball team proposal made by Mark Houser to the McHenry County College Board.

The difference is that no one on the McHenry County College Board voted against the proposal, although two did recant in comments before the Crystal Lake City Council. They were Donna Kurtz and Scott Summers.

The Chicago Sun-Times broke the story.

As I understand the concept of the McHenry County SportsPlex planned for Lakewood, Illinois, it is to be a regional facility drawing teams from throughout the country.

Sure, it will aim to find players in the immediate vicinity of McHenry County, but its developers also hope to draw teams that travel nationally. They would fly into O’Hare or Midway Airports.

Now comes Oak Lawn’s Denise and Mike Stillman, baseball fans with friends with enough money to buy the “Field of Dreams” movie farm in Iowa.

And, what do you think they plan for the part of the 193-acre farm that was not used in the movie?

An indoor training facilty is touted.

A regional baseball and softball complex.

Indoor training domes.

Opening in 2014.

Not quite the same as the proposed Lakewood facility, which would include soccer and other sports, but close.

And, competition, it seems to me.

Even if the developers are billing it as “a very affordable family tourist destination.”

The McHenry County SportsPlex has about three more months to come up with money to proceed under the extension granted by the Lakewood Village Board this summer.

On a related matter, as I was briefly looking at Northwest Heralds saved for me by my mother-in-law this summer before tossing them into re-cycling, I noticed that Woodstock minor league baseball stadium developer Mark Houser hasn’t found investors to build his vision either.