Michael Steiner, then a 溏心vlog免费B站 junior, presents his research about repurposing McCoy Stadium at a 2016 Statehouse meeting. Courtesy of The Collaborative<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u201cIt\u2019s certainly more valuable now,\u201d said Hall, who graduated in May with a bachelor\u2019s degree in history and political science. \u201cHopefully our research can help lawmakers see that there are innovative ideas for re-inventing McCoy Stadium that can carry Pawtucket into a new and bright future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Options include what the students\u2019 research revealed to be the most common outcomes for ballparks left abandoned \u2013 demolishing the stadium; selling it \u201cas is\u201d; renovating it for use by a different team or sport; and converting it into a public park. The report\u2019s final option highlights two inventive possibilities \u2013 repurposing the historic city landmark as much-needed housing or as a sports-focused public high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe housing and high school ideas were the ones our team found the most innovative and exciting,\u201d Hall said. \u201cHowever, it\u2019s not up to the policy brief to provide a solution or even a recommendation. The brief acts as a tool showing the relative merits and challenges of all the viable potential solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adaptive reuse of the park, the report cites, can be costly because old buildings usually require extensive renovations, making options to demolish the stadium and start from scratch attractive. But the report notes, \u201ca deep connection like the one between Pawtucket and McCoy Stadium may make repurposing a more palatable option than demolition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indianapolis\u2019 Bush Stadium is noted as a highly successful and innovative example of reuse. Bush Stadium, the home of the Double-A Indianapolis Indians until 1996, was turned into a 138-unit housing complex. In 2013, Stadium Lofts opened retaining many of the stadium\u2019s historic character, such as the box office, the playing diamond and field lighting. The project cost $13 million, helped by $5.3 million in grants from the city and state, the report notes.<\/p>\n
Redeveloping McCoy into housing could be \u201can exciting option,\u201d the report states, noting a number of state and federal funding programs that support mixed-income housing developments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re so short on housing here and that would actually be an economic benefit to the city,\u201d Pearson-Merkowitz said. \u201cWe have this example that would save the cultural icon of the stadium while bringing a needed good to the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sports-focused public high school is another innovative approach, but one that has never been tried. The school could \u201cmeet the academic and athletic needs of Rhode Island\u2019s high school baseball and softball players,\u201d the report says. The report cites several private sports academies, including the multi-sport IMG Academy in Florida that, at the time of the report, had 900 students from pre-kindergarten through high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis conversion,\u201d the report notes, \u201cwould be an exciting opportunity for Rhode Island to adapt an idea from the private sector to provide a unique environment for students while also repurposing a vacant cultural landmark.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the 溏心vlog免费B站 report was presented at a 2016 Statehouse gathering arranged by The Collaborative, an organization that connects higher-education researchers with public policymakers, a Pawtucket legislator was fascinated with the high school option, Pearson-Merkowitz said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a number of questions from representatives at the presentation,\u201d added Hall. \u201cA Pawtucket representative was fairly hopeless about the PawSox leaving, but after learning of all the options, he said he was more optimistic about what they could do with the stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hall, who grew up in North Smithfield<\/strong> and frequently attended games at McCoy, said her familiarity with the state and Pawtucket helped her analyze the options for how they would fit with the city. A big part of the early work on the report for her and Steiner was getting to know the city\u2019s economics \u2013 housing costs, income, employment \u2013 along with understanding the PawSox\u2019s financial agreement with Pawtucket.<\/p>\nFor her part, Hall focused on what other municipalities had done in similar cases, finding and researching 90 ballparks around the country that had been abandoned between 1999 and 2014. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t as easy as a Google search,\u201d said Hall. \u201cYou really have to think outside the box. It\u2019s like being a detective. You have to be flexible and innovative in your research skills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steiner concentrated on the financial aspects of each stadium example, along with researching funding and costs for different options. The pair then categorized the stadium case studies by outcome to come up with a list of options, and further analyzed how those options would work in Pawtucket.<\/p>\n
Each of the first four options \u2013 demolition, selling the property as is, renovating for use as a different type of stadium, and converting it into a public park \u2013 carry their pros and cons, Hall said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was important to address some of the most obvious options,\u201d she said. \u201cAside from being valid solutions that might prove to be the best options for Pawtucket, they showed that we had seriously considered all options rather than a chosen few. I think the process of considering the status quo \u2013 leaving the stadium where it is \u2013 and justifying why the status quo was inadequate taught me a tremendous amount about the policy process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Sept. 17, 2018 \u2013 With the Pawtucket Red Sox\u2019s decision in August to leave the city for Worcester at the start of the 2021 season, state and local officials are now turning their attention to the future of what has been the minor-league team\u2019s home for nearly a half century. Deciding what\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-74243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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