The city's new minor-league ballpark is 8 years old; revenue for repairs, replacements is needed

CEDAR RAPIDS - Little can shake off the winter blues quite like seeing grass start to green at Veterans Memorial Stadium.

Even so, with opening day at the city's minor league baseball field just six days away, city leaders and the management of Cedar Rapids Kernels' baseball team are taking stock of a surprising truth – the city's new ballpark, which cost $16.5 million to build and has debt payments still to be made, is eight years old.

And the park off Rockford Road SW is showing some age.

“This is a beautiful stadium when you have everything fixed up,” council member Justin Shields says. “We need to make sure it stays that way.”

Shields has called on the City Council to pay attention to the capital-improvement needs of the stadium, and last month he proposed that the council participate in a repair program that might cost $150,000 a year for a decade.

Shields said he has been troubled to learn both that the stadium has some significant problems in places with leaks when it rains and that the stadium has no dedicated fund for higher-ticket-priced repairs in place.

“That really bothers me,” he says.

Jack Roeder, who is retiring after the season as the Kernels' general manager after 20 seasons with the ball team, helped lead Shields, Mayor Ron Corbett and council member Chuck Wieneke on a tour of the stadium in recent days.

At the top of the list of needed fixes, says Roeder, is a major leaking problems at an expansion joint on the first-base side of the stadium that sends water from the roof, onto the concourse and down into the area below the concourse that is used for indoor batting practice. The stadium has other water drainage issues that also need addressed, he says.

Also at the top of the Roeder's priority list of needs: new field turf (after this season), which will cost $50,000 to $60,000; replacement of field-light bulbs, for $30,000; and parking lot maintenance, estimated to cost $250,000 over 10 years. Major League Baseball demands certain standards be met when it comes to items like playing surface and field lighting, Roeder notes.

The stadium also could use a new scoreboard within the decade with a price tag of perhaps $500,000 as well as new heating and air-conditioning units, he says.

A list of capital needs could come to $1.6 million over ten years.

Just who pays what at Veterans Memorial Stadium has long made for interesting discussions because the facility is owned by the city, managed by the city's Veterans Memorial Commission and used by the Kernels.

Roeder notes that the commission gives the club about $70,000 a year from property-tax revenue for routine facility maintenance, and he says the Kernels - owned by a group of community baseball lovers who call themselves the Cedar Rapids Baseball Inc. - also contribute some each year to maintain the stadium.

But what is needed now, Roeder says, is capital improvements over and above routine maintenance. And he says, the ballclub's lease with the city says that burden falls to the city if the city has money to pay for the work. “If,” Roeder points out.

Mayor Ron Corbett says the owner of a facility – the city owns the stadium – typically has the burden to make major capital improvements.

“I'm personally committed to helping (council member) Justin (Shields) figure out a way to put together a plan,” Corbett says. “If you don't address the issues now, you'll be addressing them at a much higher cost 10 years from now.”

Corbett says council member Monica Vernon has wondered if the city could impose a maintenance surcharge to the price of the Kernels' tickets, an idea Roeder isn't fond of.

“Out ticket price is where it needs to be,” Roeder says.

He counters, wondering if the city could make some hotel-motel tax revenue available for the ballclub and stadium, though Corbett has said he might need a chunk of that to help fund a new convention center.

“Obviously if there's a will, there's a way,” says Roeder. “If there wasn't a will, this facility wouldn't be here.”

The new Kernels team, part of the Los Angeles Angels farm system, arrives in Cedar Rapids on Monday.

Roeder, just back from spring training, says there's a chance that 10 to 11 of the Angels' top 30 prospects will be on the field here when the season starts at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

“The stadium is beautiful; fans love coming out here,” Roeder says.

The issue, he reemphasizes, is long-range planning, something that had fallen by the way in the old Veterans Memorial Stadium.

“There wasn't that rainy-day fund to keep up with the deterioration of an aging facility,” Roeder says. “What I think everyone is trying to do is make sure that doesn't happen in the new Vets Memorial Stadium.”