Detroit writer Michael Betzold is a former Free Press reporter.
By Michael Betzold
Even the folks who engineered the plan for Michigan and Trumbull that goes before City Council on Tuesday don’t like what it has become.
Attorney Thom Linn says the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy never expected the Police Athletic League to carpet the historic field with artificial turf. The conservancy now deeply regrets not requiring natural grass as part of the deal. But Linn is still shepherding through the plan because, he told me, “the train has left the station.”
Linn says that the $3 million from a 2009 federal grant Sen. Carl Levin got authorized to “redevelop and preserve” the former site of Tiger Stadium “as a public park” must be spent by October, and the conservancy has already pledged it to PAL.
Once key city officials assented to the plan for PAL to take over the site—and when the Larson Realty Group joined in to add plans for housing along Trumbull and retail along Michigan—there was widespread relief among people such as stalwart historic preservationist Peter Comstock Riley, who had fought off earlier and much uglier plans such as a warehouse and a shopping center for the site.
After the Tigers left after the 1999 season, the city showed little interest in a slew of creative plans for the Corner. Proposals for various uses of the ball park including minor league and college baseball got the cold shoulder from the city largely because Tigers owner Mike Ilitch didn’t want anyone playing there while his team and Comerica Park were still struggling to find their footing.
A nasty surprise
After the long, painful stadium demolition, the Corner became another abandoned city property—until Tom Derry started mowing it in May 2010 and volunteers joined him to form the Navin Field Grounds Crew and uncover and maintain the original dirt and grass field, which dates to 1912. (Bennett Park, with a different configuration at the same site, dates to 1896.)
PAL, with the city’s backing, figured it had control of the site—and Levin’s $3 million earmark—and last year began an ambitious fundraising campaign to build a showcase facility for its youth athletics programs there. But the turf came as a nasty surprise to many.
CEO Tim Richey insists PAL needs artificial turf because natural grass won’t hold up under the extensive programming planned—including football and soccer and other sports besides baseball.
In the meantime, Corktown residents have become fond of access to the field, and with the Navin Field Grounds Crew taking over as the unofficial grass-roots caretaker for the property, it’s been the site in recent summers of constant youth and adult ball games, birthday parties, weddings, and commemorative re-enactments—a living piece of history visited by baseball fans from across the state, the nation, and the world.
Grounds Crew leaders Derry and Dave Mesrey support PAL using the field—but they are adamantly against artificial turf, as are most Corktown residents and other users of the site and baseball fans worldwide.
Faced with mounting questions about the health hazards of turf—and armed only with a highly selective group of research studies that brush those concerns aside—Richey and PAL have dug in their heels.
Last week, prior to a meeting of the council’s planning and economic development committee, they urged PAL parents and supporters to speak out against critics whom they characterized as wanting to keep kids off the field at Michigan and Trumbull for “thousands of hours” a year.
Fight among potential friends
That’s how—in a city with scores of vacant lots and many poorly tended play fields—we’ve got stakeholders who are natural allies pitted against one another in a fight over historic property.
At the council committee hearing Thursday, committee chair Gabe Leland asked Richey to put in writing a plan to guarantee at least 15 hours of public access each week. The issue went to the full council for a hearing.
Richey now says PAL will look at “alternative” infills for their synthetic surface instead of crumb rubber—the most common and most controversial element in the new generation of synthetic fields, which has in many recent reports been suspected as a carcinogen.
But other types of surfaces are also of unknown safety. The most popular alternative, “Corkonut,” has cork particles that may break down and be inhaled, reportedly causing potentially severe health problems for kids with asthma and other sensitivities.
Another product, Nike Grind, is made from ground-up sneakers. Many infills have been rushed to market as communities nationwide oppose crumbed rubber. A state of Connecticut study of seventeen “alternative” infill materials found sixteen of them contain chemicals or metals that could be dangerous.
PAL’s definition of “public access” remains murky. Asked if access will be free of charge and would include actual ball games on the field, Richey has not answered definitively.
Clumsy grant grab
Once PAL carpets the field, the historic diamond would be buried under a turf surface laid out for many sports—and PAL’s own conceptual drawing seems to orient the field in the old Bennett Park configuration, with home plate at Michigan and Trumbull, not Michigan and Cochrane. So will the 15 weekly hours of public access be all that meaningful?
PAL appears to be making a clumsy stab at historic preservation to justify its receipt of the $3-million grant. Richey has spoken about “interactive exhibits” in a “concourse” of the planned stadium educating young people about various athletes and their accomplishments throughout history.
These plans don’t inspire much confidence that it would be a quality historical museum that zeroes in on the history of the site where Mark Fidrych, Willie Horton, Hank Aguirre, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson , and the Lions’ Bobby Layne all played—and where Joe Louis fought in an outdoor ring and Nelson Mandela spoke at a 1990 rally.
Has the train really left the station?
Council will vote Tuesday only on the land transfer from the city to the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation—a necessary step, but not a final one. And PAL still has lots of money to raise to make its dream facility reality. Richey has said it’s raised $5.5 million—less than half of the $12.4 million its website says is needed to build its facility at the site and fund its initial operations.
Unseemly finger-pointing
The last thing we need is another turf war and finger-pointing about who loves the kids more. Creative compromises for the Corner are still conceivable.
Nobody opposes the youth of Detroit playing there, though many PAL parents and supporters are among those questioning whether artificial turf would meet PAL’s own stated goals for a “healthy and safe” playing field.
Could the historic diamond be shared with the wider community and still fulfill a more financially feasible version of PAL’s plan?
Could the city benefit from maintaining the Corner’s historic integrity—and the resultant “place-making” potential for attracting visitors to the site? And if there isn’t a way to share the field, could PAL be supported in finding a better location for its showcase facility and headquarters elsewhere?
PAL’s mission does not include historic preservation activities. Nor does its commitment to healthier environments for youth athletics mesh with artificial turf.
But those are issues for PAL. The issue for this city is a larger one: Do we cover over the past to build our future?
