A Ballpark by Any Other Name
Baseball fans across Chicagoland are waiting in eager anticipation to see what happens now that ownership of a beloved landmark is in flux. Wrigley Field is in the process of being sold by Sam Zell, the investor who purchased the Tribune Company last year and has since decided to divest himself of the stadium.
A recent report from the Chicago Tribune indicates that a deal to buy the stadium that was in the works for the past few weeks between Zell and the state-owned Illinois Sports Facilities Authority (ISFA) is in trouble. Complications abound for this process, including assessing the cost of renovating the facility once it is purchased (estimates range from $350 to $400 million) and determining what source of funding would back the municipal bonds that would be used to buy the park.
Various voices has been raised to stop the sale of the private Wrigley Field to a public entity, primarily with the objection that the tax money that would inevitably be used to fund the purchase could be better used to fix current problems in the fiscally-strained city and state. In addition, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley seems reluctant to give in on a few fronts that could hold up the project.
One way or another baseball fans are probably going to have to get used to seeing a new corporate name appended to Wrigley Field. I, for one, am unhappy but willing to endure the change. It won’t be as bad as we fear. The park will still be there in all its aged glory, and you can never erase the history or the ambiance. If those are the things we care about most, the sale of the park to another private entity wouldn’t be that bad at all.
Recently
Leave a Reply