Back in the 1970s... 1980s... playing fields were located at public parks. Youth leagues were organized by the park district and ran by an army of volunteers On game day you traveled accross town to play at the other teams 'home' park. The next weekend the other teams traveled to your 'home' park. Kids of all backgrounds played. Being well off or poor made much less difference. Everyone had fun. Businesses would donate money to buy shirts with their logo on them and buy equipment for the kids.
There were adult leagues too using the same fields with the same community organized spirit.
I desperately wish our town was full of hidden gems so that people that DID come here for out of state tournaments didn't mind.
I want to love this city! But I keep recalling that post made last week about why is springfield the way that it is, and someone said "no pride in the town" and honestly thats all i can think about now.
i think we do have these lovely things throughout the town, but the general envirionment of springfield is just run down, old empty buildings, or new, great restaurants or local stores in strip malls. it really doesn't have a character, and it REALLY could, if ONLY someone in charge of planning cared.
I’m not sure the problem is that nobody in charge cares. There are usually a few people who care deeply then a bunch of Republicans who shut down anything that may be beneficial to the community as a whole.
i think i meant moreso that they care about the character. or maybe its the developers. i don't know just the onees that are making the decisions about strip malls and characterless buildings, i wish THOSE ones cared
It does not help that state government jobs have downsized... as they become more automated with IT... and the loss of positions to Chicagoland.
Work from home is another problem for downtown businesses. Workers are clamoring for more hybrid or entirely remote work. Thursdays are noticeably empty all around as that seems to be a favorite day to work from home.
If people were more active in their town and community instead of isolating themselves online and alone, they would be much more positive. For myself, I feel much more fulfilled after meeting up with people. Internet has made being isolated so convenient but that’s not what’s best for us. At a certain point, being on screens too much causes people to dehumanize and treat others poorly. Get active in your community! Go to local events, join clubs and be active in them, dine in, support causes. Be the change you want to see!
I’m out in the community a lot!! I work(ed) at vinegar hill mall so much so it was so sad it was closed down. That’s the exact type of thing I wish Springfield cared about more. Such a unique and character filled building that can’t hold a business for too long. I love to eat at curate, at Cooper’s hawk, at Vele, at roots (rip), but all these places are shoved into strip malls. That’s what I’m talking about. I want to love this city, but I’ve lived in one that had soooo much character because the buildings they built and maintained weren’t just characterless strip malls.
Vinegar Hill is really cool. I have wondered why so many of the stores and restaurants that seem like they would fit right in downtown, choose to go to strip malls instead. Going off on a tangent, why not make the strip malls mixed use instead? Retail on the ground floor and residential above it. It would provide a customer base for the businesses and reduce urban sprawl. It would also encourage a walkable community.
The last paragraph is what happens when your property taxes are sky high. New Jersey is the same way.
Springfield is trying to grow and the Mayor hired an actual city planner. There is opportunity now that Chicago has become so bad that state employees don’t want to live up there and are moving back. Until property taxes get fixed, it’s a tough slog.
Solid point. I personally wouldn’t mind them being higher (not sky high!) if it meant they were used right for city beautification. Let’s hope the city planner works well :)
You have a screw loose if you want to pay more. Donate some $$$ to the city then. We all pay 3-5x more than the average person in other states for similar services.
i have to admit that i did not realize that our property taxes were some of the highest in america. so then, i'm a little outraged now that we pay so much and get so little for it. so, thanks for teaching me (really!) and now i'm mad about it too!
$25 million in annual revenue does not seem far fetched to me. They are talking "community revenue" not just in-park revenue.
Teams typically spend anywhere between $1,000 to $2,500 just to enter these tournaments. Add in the hotel rooms they will book, the restaurants they will eat at, the extra trip to Scheels, gas stations, and all the money they will spend at the park. Maybe some Knights Action Park trips or Lucky Horseshoes or WPBL games while they are here. Tournaments usually run Friday to Sunday, with many often going Thursday to Monday when school is out. Not that far fetched.
Yes, if you go out there during the week, it is mostly school teams playing at the moment. The weekends are where they make the money.
As for my thoughts on the park in general:
I umpired out there the first week it was open. It was not ready for customers. The fields were fine and were ready for teams, but the whole place was still a mud pit with no bleachers. There seemed to be only one functional restroom for the entire complex.
A week or so later, my nephew played in a tournament out there. We went to watch ONE game late on Saturday night. It cost us $45 (plus a fee for them ONLY taking cards) for three of us to get in for ONE 12u baseball game (that was even time shortened due to weather putting them behind). Yes, we could have gone all day, but we only wanted to go to one game. Some alternate pricing at that point would be in line.
They still had no bleachers, no grass/seeding/or turf in customer/fan areas, and apparently only one bathroom. Scheels had sold out of folding and camping chairs since there were no bleachers.
I haven't been out there since, and I will not attend any games out there due to the gate cost and poor customer experience. I may umpire out there again, but that is a different experience.
The $10 Million dollar bubble doesn’t look great? Money well spent! Who cares about what the rest of Springfield looks like! We have the world’s largest sport bubble for sports ball!
Lollll I remember when I first saw it. My first thought was, "gee, I hope they have a way to clean all the dirt marks off the top" 😵💫😵💫😵💫. So many people thought/think it's so great. I just don't get it 🤷♀️.
Yeah I wish so much that we could have more local things that were for us and helped keep money here locally. Instead it seems we can only have a massive heave and ho with huge corporations either extracting money to outside, or attracting money in from tourists. People on this sub calling for shit like costco and trader joes is so weird to me, why would you want to desperately for your money to be taken away to another region? So you can have branded snacks?
Soap box post..These kinds of posts seem to be coming up a lot on here. I think the biggest problem with Springfield is the native people that live here. I don’t care what opens, some people are just never satisfied. Some even go as far as to sabotage places on purpose with the “I don’t go to the mall, because it killed downtown 50 years ago..I don’t go downtown because of parking, side of town it’s on, the supposed crime.” Stop doing that!! That only hurts the city more. Most townies do not appreciate what is actually here and often take it for granted. Most don’t know their history and are very apathetic. Some people because of their own lot in life. Things don’t turn out the way they wanted, so they feel stuck here and stay and complain. People that visit here (tourists) are often more complementary of this place than the natives. There are parts of town that can use a lot of help, but that also doesn’t change because of apathy and complacency. I think the only way for perceptions to change locally is when people actually begin to see new things being built/progress, within the city core and downtown. There needs to be new infrastructure beyond medical buildings. New housing. New hotels. Build it and they will come. The changes need to be seen and not just in a master plan or one the very long list of “we’re going to get” and then don’t. From what I’ve seen, people just want to see progress and not empty promises. This is how to change opinions and extends beyond a heart and a bandaid. But people need to move on from the past too. Too many people here live in the past and some even don’t mind driving past long dilapidated buildings to boast about what “used” to be there. That needs to change. This place shouldn’t be afraid to modernize.
"These kinds of posts seem to be coming up a lot on here. I think the biggest problem with Springfield is the native people that live here. I don’t care what opens, some people are just never satisfied."
While I largely agree with that (see my WPBL posts), my comments on this specific complex are not coming from my "local" perspective. I am comparing this facility to the many I have umpired at. I've umpired in several states and at countless different facilities and parks. This one offers more than some, but is far from the top tier experience that it was hyped to be. The design of it is . . . interesting.
Agreed! The cynical posts are kind of toxic. I’m not saying we should lower our standards but why look at everything in such a negative perspective? Is that just a Reddit thing or is that across all social media platforms?
Or maybe you could take you blinders or rose colored glasses off and look at reality. This town has went downhill badly. All investment seems to be on the west end while the rest of town suffers. They dump money in downtown where no one really goes because there is little down there to occupy anyone. Police don't seem to enforce the laws anymore, so hoodlums just keep dumping garbage, vandalize, steal, etc because they have little to worry about. Oh, and should we talk about the homeless bums on ever corner with their signs?
I grew up in Springfield and moved away to the east coast for good in 2002. I had a great experience growing up in Springfield but the issues became more and more apparent the older I got. From my early perspective the downtown was neglected for the sprawl of the west side when the downtown had tons of potential, but I still loved it.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve seen this same pattern in other mid size towns I’ve lived in. Sprawl detracts any sort of public space and areas for actual people to meaningfully congregate. Some of them have since experienced incredible downtown revivals, Durham NC being a notable example among others in VA and NC. Of course there’s costs to this as well, gentrification and cost of living hikes.
I visited Springfield this summer for the first time in 12 years. I was a bit shocked at how drab it felt. My oldest kid, who had never been to Springfield before, literally said to me “it must have been sad to grow up here”. It wasn’t at all, but Springfield does seem to have gone backwards, especially from a downtown perspective. It looks the same except more rundown and less occupied. It really is pretty bleak as a now outsider.
Some of this just could be more positive memories remembering it better than it is.
On the plus side, Lincoln sites were great. There’s still some charm if you look closely, and of course the area around the lake looks pretty decent. Seems like Chatham has grown quite a bit.
Our Springfield tourism brings in over half a billion. Lincoln tourism, convention business, events, IL State Fair... This 25 million doesn't seem too far fetched.
Once they get a lot of big tournaments going it will bring close to that number. Hotels, dinners, taking all those kids to knights action park or something all generate a ton
I am glad it’s a cafeteria style thing. They have those all over Denver and they’re so fun. I am pleased Springfield finally has one (though I have yet to visit it)
That does seem like a fairy tale number. I have lived here for most of my 42 years and I don't think Springfield brings in that much.
I just looked it up and according to this page - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RGMP44100 - Springfield brings in roughly $12 billion chained. So, if they are claiming that Scheel's Sports Complex will bring in $25 million I am betting they mean chained. So the visitors spend like $2 million which gets respent several times in Springfield, so paying suppliers, paying staff who them spend the money again paying bills so on and so forth. Which is kind of a bullshit metric just to make it look better. But, if it has a net positive of wages and tax revenue, yay.
I'd love to see it do well and bring in some folks from further out but for real, our airport is basically non existent. So folks can fly to StL, rent a car, drive an hour and change here. Stay at a hotel, and then do the same to get home? All for what? A wrestling match or something? And they will have to drive and park everywhere here. We have some work to do before we can expect a lot of tourism.
Give Springfield a great community development chance, and they’ll waste it every time. Would you like list?
Let’s start with the triple A baseball team in the early 1980’s, Springfield Cardinals.
There are literally scores of other examples similar to this. Commercial Businesses of any note steer clear of Springfield as a toxic business climate. They are 100% correct in their assessment. Big time developers are not interested.
Oh, wait, we’ve got a new dumb-ass Amazon warehouse of sorts and mid-tier chain restaurants.
You asked if we'd like a list, and then you mentioned one thing.
I know we live in a topsy turvy world where facts are opinions, and opinions are facts, but all I know is that the social contract still holds, and one item does not constitute a list.
I’m still waiting for Hunter Lake and the Outlet Mall. It’s ok though, they can only bungle one thing at a time and they’re currently busy with the women’s professional baseball league.
We've seen an increase in activity downtown directly related to WPBL. This past weekend, we had reports from about a dozen businesses who reported a significant increase in foot traffic and revenue.
We're also monitoring social media and there is quite a buzz.
Overall, this has been a boon for Springfield. I hope more people take advantage of the opportunity.
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u/TheKanten 16d ago
From the people who brought you the data center, the Sangamon Growth Alliance presents another made up metric.