Ga. minor league owner tries to lure another team to Illinois

<p>Most days, Mayor Bob Butler can't avoid hearing the pitch from strangers itching to see minor-league baseball come to this southern Illinois community of about 16,000.</p><p>Build a ballpark and we'll come, the mayor says the refrain goes lately from young and old alike. Be patient, the 78-year-old Butler replies.</p><p>With any luck, he says, a scrubby, 31-acre patch of land where deer often gallop and graze on the southern outskirts of town could be home to a new 5,000- to 7,000-seat ballpark as early as next spring.</p><p>Butler _ the mayor here for the last 42 years _ can't wait, although he says 2007 is more likely.</p><p>"I think it will help put us on the map," he says.</p><p>More than a century since the Cairo Egyptians baseball team in southern Illinois won the Class D Kitty League title, Butler and organizers continue closing in on trying to lure a Midwest League Class A baseball team to the region.</p><p>The project's chief investor _ East Alton attorney John Simmons _ has secured a loan covering most of the ballpark's expected $16 million price tag. The city also went to bat, agreeing to raise its sales tax on most items by one-quarter of 1 percent, with half of that increase earmarked to help repay the loan. The project also expects to get $3 million from the state from a fund earmarked for economic development in the latest budget. And the land _ near Interstate 57 and Illinois Route 13 _ has already been bought for roughly $1 million.</p><p>Some unresolved issues are biggies: Simmons' Southern Illinois Baseball Group still must buy a Midwest League team, which the wealthy attorney says could cost $5 million to $8 million, perhaps bumping the project's overall tab to near $25 million.</p><p>Simmons earlier this year reportedly paid several million dollars for the South Atlantic League's Savannah (Ga.) Sand Gnats of Class A, but he has said he has no plans to bring them to Illinois. He says talks with certain clubs for Marion continue, although he won't elaborate.</p><p>Still, he can hang his cap on the fact that others have recently lured in minor-league teams. In neighboring Missouri, millionaire businessman John Q. Hammons built a $32 million ballpark bearing his name in his Ozarks hometown of Springfield, this season now home to the Double-A Cardinals.</p><p>The Midwest League features Illinois teams in Geneva and Peoria, as well as clubs in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. With 160 farm teams in North America, Florida-based Minor League Baseball has no plans to expand, spokesman Jim Ferguson says. The Midwest League's president, George Spelius, adds he's not privy to which teams are being courted to move to Marion.</p><p>"I say this with a smile _ any team's for sale if the price is right," Spelius says.</p><p>Simmons has deep pockets.</p><p>"I'm real confident _ I hesitate to say positive _ that there's almost no chance I won't be able to get a team," says the attorney who founded the SimmonsCooper LLC law firm that has made millions of dollars in product-liability lawsuits.</p><p>Simmons, who took over the Marion project early last year, knows that construction must begin soon if the site is to open in time for next season. He isn't putting a deadline on when that window may slam shut and push the stadium's christening into 2007 _ a date Butler considers "more realistic." Most expect a decision within weeks.</p><p>"It takes a certain amount of time to build a new stadium, and we're rapidly approaching the time to decide" on whether to scrap 2006 as the debut season, says Dennis Poshard, spokesman for Simmons' ballpark group.</p><p>Either way, Butler considers the push overdue in southern Illinois, where from the turn of the 20th century to the advent of television, minor-league teams played from Harrisburg to Cairo.</p><p>A 2003 feasibility study paid for by unions and tourism groups showed that a Class A team in a new ballpark here would draw more than 180,000 fans a year and pump more than $6 million annually into the economy. The area also would benefit from millions spent on construction of a stadium Butler says could seasonally employ dozens.</p><p>Organizers say studies show that about 270,000 people live within 30 miles of the proposed ballpark, about 675,000 within 60 miles _ plenty of prospective ticket-buyers where the nearest big-league baseball city is St. Louis, home of the Cardinals broadly favored here.</p><p>"The area is a hotbed for baseball fans," Butler says in a town that sports Ray Fosse Park, homage to a native son and former Cleveland Indians catcher perhaps best known for getting bowled over by Pete Rose at the plate in the 1970 All-Star game.</p><p>Butler thinks a new ballpark could be a marketing gem for a city he says embraces economic development, as was the case in 1997 after the downtown civic center went up in flames.</p><p>"The smoke was still rising into the sky when we pledged to rebuild," with local voters passing a referendum on the matter by a 2-to-1 margin, he says. About a year ago, locals opened a new $9 million, 1,100-seat civic center, financed with $3 million in bonds, $1.4 million from fundraisers, $1 million from the state and the rest from the city's general revenues.</p><p>"Around here, we're not interested in throwing up barriers," Butler says.</p><p>____</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x1cdffb4)</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2005/6/143985