AVON — The sun is shining, the grass is green and the Tribe is playing again. It’s baseball season in Northeast Ohio.

But if you want to root, root, root for the minor league home team, it’s going to be another year.

Avon Mayor Jim Smith said he wants to break ground sometime next month on a 5,000-seat baseball stadium at the corner of Interstate 90 and state Route 611. The ballpark will open the first week of June 2009 and will be home to a brand-new Frontier League expansion team.

It’s not all about hot dogs and home runs, however. Smith said the field and a new YMCA next door will be a safe place for teens to hang out and will also pump a lot of cash into the local economy.

“How many kids will this help? It won’t just be Avon kids, it will be kids all over the county,” he said. “If they’re here, they’re not out somewhere else making bad decisions. That’s something you can’t put a price on.”

Avon might have been able to swing the cost of its own recreation center, Smith said, but partnering with the YMCA of Greater Cleveland and the Frontier League will give about 295,000 people in a 10- or 15-mile radius a perfect place to exercise and have fun.

Smith said he expects about 2 million people a year to visit the stadium, driving up local tourism and bringing a host of new businesses to the Interstate 90 corridor, including a hotel, restaurants and offices.

There will be plenty for adults to do, too — including a party patio with beer and concessions, loges and tie-ins with local company fitness plans.

Smith said the stadium will be a lot easier to build than an office building or Avon’s police department, so it won’t take nearly as long to finish. The YMCA, meanwhile, should be complete by December 2009, he said.

Terri Manns, vice president of fund development for the Cleveland YMCA, said her organization needs about $5.2 million to build the new athletic facility, which will include a traditional gym, hockey rink and swimming pool.

A big part of that will come from a 0.25-percent income tax increase passed by Avon voters in November. The tax will raise $1.2 million a year over the next 30 years to build the $6 million to $9 million stadium and the $14.2 million YMCA.

In the past few months, officials have decided to call the site the French Creek YMCA in Avon, Manns said.

Once finished, the facility will create about 85 new jobs, YMCA of Greater Cleveland President Glenn Haley said.

“The ramifications for the economy of the entire county are tremendous,” he said. “We’re asking people to invest in that. We’re not asking for them to give money to something that’s going to just be a flash in the pan.”

Manns said her organization pumped $8.6 million into the regional economy when building the Lakewood YMCA in 2005 and 2006. The site pays out $1.1 million a year in wages and generates $300,000 in federal, state and local tax revenue.

She also said there is still a plan in the works to bring a Y-Express to an undetermined location in the county — probably in the Amherst-Lorain area. Manns said the facility would be about 14,000 square feet, would look almost like a storefront and would be headquarters for all kinds of community programming.

Previously, her group had considered building on Cooper Foster Park Road in Amherst or renovating the former Orius building at the corner of state Route 58 and Park Avenue in Amherst. Neither place was suitable, she said.

The YMCA of Greater Cleveland doesn’t have any link to the old Lorain or Elyria YMCAs, Manns said. The groups were separate nonprofits run by different management.

For information about donating to the new YMCA project, call (216) 263-6844 or e-mail tmanns@clevelandymca.org.

Smith said the Frontier League is locked into the new stadium deal, but there’s always a 5 percent chance that the deal will fall through.
Lorain officials fell into that 5 percent gap when the league decided not to put a team at the brand-new Pipe Yard.

“That’s not going to happen here,” Smith said.

Contact Jason Hawk at 329-7148 or jhawk@chroniclet.com.

In order to comment, you must agree to our user agreement and discussion guidelines.
You must be registered and logged in to post a comment. If you aren't already registered, click here.
If you are registered, click here to log in.
Need help? Email Us.