Kernels, Veterans Memorial Commission debate need for new scoreboard

Just how snazzy a video scoreboard does the city need at its 10-year-old Veterans Memorial Stadium minor league park? And who should pay for it?

Those are the emerging points of debate among the city's Veterans Memorial Commission, the City Council and the stadium's principal tenant, the Cedar Rapids Kernels' baseball team, as they look to the maintenance needs of the stadium - which cost $16 million to build and opened a decade ago this April - over the next seven years.

A City Hall study - which the commission will begin to review at its Monday evening meeting - lists as a priority the replacement of the stadium scoreboard at an estimated cost of $550,000 to $600,000, Mike Jager, executive director at the commission, said on Monday.

However, Jager said the commission's top priority is completing the $19 million renovation of the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island, the work on which is only 10 to 15 percent complete. Also a top priority is the development of programs in the building to serve veterans, he said.

"We've got a few things on our plate right now," Jager said of the commission. "I don't think putting $600,000 toward a scoreboard has been on our priority list. From the Kernels' point of view, it's a very important priority."

In terms of issues at the stadium, Jager said the commission and the City Council have agreed to focus on fixes to the infrastructure and on improvements demanded of the stadium by minor league baseball.

In the current fiscal year, for instance, the council has set aside $100,000 for repairs, which include upgrading the field lighting, replacing backstop netting and replacing some sections of sidewalk and some carpeting. In the previous year, the council spent $150,000 to fix some chronic water drainage issues. And in future years, the council has expressed support for additional annual spending for the park's capital needs. Some of the needs are apt to include replacing the outfield grass, fixing additional drainage problems and making concrete repairs in the seating area.

But then there is the scoreboard.

Jager and Gary Keoppel, president of the Kernels' board of directors, on Monday expressed different views about what responsibility the commission and city had to provide a scoreboard for the park and what responsibility the Kernels might have.

Keoppel said the agreement put in place a decade ago calls for the city to cover the scoreboard costs.

He added that the "industry standard" for the life cycle of an electronic scoreboard like the one at Veterans Memorial Stadium, which features a large video screen, is about 10 years. That' the reason, he said, that the company with the stadium's scoreboard maintenance contract can no longer find parts for the existing scoreboard's decade-old electronics.

"We've been limping along the last few years," Keoppel said.

In initial discussions among the city, commission and ballclub, the city floated the idea that the Kernels consider imposing a 50-cent or 75-cent surcharge per ticket to help defray the cost of the new scoreboard, Jager said.

Keoppel said a ticket surcharge was a bad idea.

"We've tried to make it family-affordable and family-friendly and to put on a surcharge is not in keeping with that," he said.

Jager said minor league baseball requires a scoreboard that keeps score, lists hits, runs and errors and tells the crowd who is at bat and what inning it is.

"Everything else, is that a requirement?" he asked.

Jager noted that the scoreboard with video screen is as much an advertising vehicle for the Kernels as a scoreboard, the revenue from which the ballclub keeps to pay its bills.

Keoppel didn't disagree that the advertising on the scoreboard makes the club some money.

"It's how we pay our lease (to the city)," he said.