Partnership outlines park plans

Baseball partners Donald B. 'Chip' Elitzer, left, and Jim Bouton explain their plans to upgrade Wahconah Park during a Pittsfield Parks Commission meeting last week at Springside House. The partnership, which includes Eric Margeneau, proposes to add two new grandstands as well as do renovations at the historic ballpark. Photo: Ben Garver / Berkshire Eagle Staff

By Tony Dobrowolski
Berkshire Eagle Staff

PITTSFIELD -- Picture a ballpark where new structures are built to blend in with the existing architecture to provide both an old-time feel and a pure baseball experience.

This is the vision former Yankees pitcher and author Jim Bouton of North Egremont and his South County partners have for renovating historic Wahconah Park, the 85-year-old field on Wahconah Street that was almost left for dead following the new-stadium controversy that polarized the city in the summer of 2001.

Rebuffed by city officials in their first attempt to attain a licensing agreement to renovate Wahconah Park and bring an independent league baseball team to Pittsfield three years ago, the South County group succeeded in its second time around last week, when the Parks Com-mission approved its agreement with the city.

Bouton and his partners, investment banker Donald B. "Chip" Elitzer of Great Barrington and psychologist and professional sports entrepreneur Eric Margenau of New York City and Stockbridge, have agreed to spend $1.5 million of their own money before May 2005 to renovate the aging ballpark, and purchase an independent league team to play there in time for the 2005 season.

Even people who opposed Bouton's plan three years ago recognize Wahconah Park's historical importance to the city, since baseball has been played on the site since 1892.

The Massachusetts Historical Commission last year declared Wahconah Park eligible for inclusion for the National Reg-ister of Historic Places, which could make the ballpark eligible for state grants that would help maintain the park.

But the consensus over the past few years, especially since Pittsfield's Class A New York-Penn League franchise moved to Troy, N.Y., after the 2000 season, was that Wahconah Park, one of only two mostly wooden ballparks still standing in the United States, was outdated, past its prime and beyond either redemption or repair.

Bouton and his partners think otherwise.

In a recent interview, Bouton said the partners believe the qualities that made Wahconah Park special in the first place, the intangibles that have led several national publications to call it one of the best ballparks in the country in which to see a baseball game, can make the park attractive and profitable once again.

"The goal is to keep Wahconah Park in its old-time feel," Bouton said. "We want to create that step back in time that everyone always appreciated in Wahconah Park. We don't want to lose that."

Bouton said the partnership, now known as Wahconah Park Inc., has been speaking with members of city boards to determine what permits they will need to acquire in order to renovate the park. He said the partners hope to begin their renovations in July, shortly after Independence Day.

He said the partners plan to renovate Wahconah Park along the lines of what is currently standing, not create a new park that looks like an old stadium, which the Baltimore Orioles did when they constructed Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 1992.

"Camden Yards is actually a fake old park," Bouton said. "This isn't going to be a fake old ballpark. This is going to be an actual old ballpark."

It's going to sound like an old ballpark, too. The rock music played between innings at most ballparks won't be played at Wahconah Park, Bouton said.

"When you go to the ballpark, you'll hear the crack of the bat, the players talking on the field," he said. "It's going to be baseball, not advertising.

"I'm not saying we're not going to have a few things going on, but it's not going to be like being at a rock concert or a pro wrestling show," he said.

Seating capacity

Bouton said the partners plan to increase Wahconah Park's seating capacity to 5,000. This might have been easier said than done if the park's current seating capacity was 4,500, as it is listed in most publications. But Bouton said the partners have since determined that Wahconah Park's capacity is actually closer to 2,500 seats. According to Eagle files, when the current grandstand was constructed in 1950 it was built to hold only 2,000.

To increase the park's seating capacity, Bouton said plans call for the construction of two 170-foot long grandstands on both the left field and right field lines, where the outside bleacher seats are currently situated. The new structures will be built to match the existing grandstand but will not be joined to it.

"When we're finished with it, it's going to look like it was built at the same time as the old grandstand," Bouton said.

New locker rooms will be constructed underneath the two new grandstands along with new restrooms. People will be able to picnic on the roof of the new left field grandstand, which will cover a "Hall of Fame" walkway containing mementos of Pittsfield's baseball past.

Plans also call for three rows of seats to be constructed beyond the outfield fence from foul line to foul line, on a line with the high school football press box that is located in center field. The first row of seats will actually be located below the top of the fence. The plan is for those seats to resemble the seats that were recently added to the top of the left field wall in Fenway Park, Bouton said.

The partners also plan to lower the dugouts and place field boxes above them, so that fans who sit in those seats will see the players disappear into the dugouts as they come off the field. Each bullpen will be placed down the baselines in foul territory, in the same manner as they are situated at Wrigley Field in Chicago. On the existing grandstand, the group plans to demolish the cinder-block building where the clubhouses are located.

Missing from the group's plans are the "not-so-luxury boxes," structures similar to the current press box that were listed in the partnership's proposal three years ago. Fourteen were to be constructed on the roof of the existing grandstand.

Bouton said the partners took the idea out of their current proposal because, "we got so much grief over it. We didn't really want to radically alter the ballpark. ... We'll leave the wooden boxes as a long-shot possibility down the road."

The group also plans to expand Wahconah Park's original footprint about 60 or 70 feet into the stadium's parking lot to make room for a "Taste of the Berkshires" food court that will supply concessions.

The parking lot is in poor condition and frequently floods when the east branch of the Housatonic River, which runs behind the outfield fence, overflows.

Bouton said the partners have already discussed several methods to alleviate the flooding, such as raising the Mill Street dam, a proposal that city officials have discussed since the 1920s, or removing upstream beaver dams that keep the water table high. "That's still under consideration," he said.

The license agreement requires the partnership to invest $1.5 million in the ballpark by opening day 2005. However, after $1 million has been invested by that date, the license agreement allows for the partnership to place the remaining $500,000 balance in escrow for the payment of future capital im-provements and facility expenses. If the partnership does not meet this commitment, the license agreement can be voided.

At one point three years ago, the group said it was interested in a 30-year lease but later said it would accept a lease as short as one year -- as long as it was renewable based on the partners achieving an annual list of performance criteria.

Local events

Bouton now says that the important part of the current license agreement with the city is that the document's renewal is subject to the partnership meeting its annual obligations.

"It's a performance license," he said. "We need to perform. We have to put $100,000 into the ballpark to get us to another year."

Three years ago, city officials expressed concerns that the South County group would not let city events take place in the ballpark if they were given a license agreement to use it.

Bouton said he didn't remember how the group's original proposal was worded, but said the current license agreement doesn't prevent other activities from taking place at Wahconah Park.

"The point is we're not going to stand in the way of high school sports," Bouton said. "That was used against us the last time. It wasn't true then and it's not true now. It may be more clear now.

"When we made our original proposal we said at every single juncture that everything is negotiable," he said. "Sit down and ne-gotiate with us. But nobody would negotiate with us."

There's also the issue of the group securing a team to bring to Pittsfield after Wahconah Park has been renovated. The Atlantic League and the Northeast League are the only independent leagues that have teams in the Northeast.

"It's too early to say" which league the group will contact, Bouton said.

In conversations with the commissioners of both leagues over the last several months, the Atlantic League has expressed more interest in the Wahconah Park proposal than the Northeast League has.

Bouton said the important issue right now is renovating Wahconah Park to make it attractive enough for the partnership to make the best deal for Pittsfield when it comes to acquiring a team.

"Teams are available," Bouton said. "Baseball towns are not. Let us show you how to take advantage of that."