Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Are Fort Worth Feral Cats Restoring LaGrave Field?

I first saw reference made to that which you see here this morning via Facebook.

My reaction to the question asked in this Fort Worth Star-Telegram headline was to wonder why.

As in why would any sane entity want to restore this rundown ballpark one more time? I have seen this ballpark already restored once since I have been observing that special American town of Fort Worth.

Years ago I made a webpage showing what I was appalled to see when I visited this imaginary jewel of a ballpark, in a town of over 800,000. That revival did not last long, and now, in 2019, this pitiful ruin of a ballpark is now located on that equally pitiful imaginary landmark known as Panther Island.

Now, I am aware there are locals who are baseball fanatics who loved watching their hometown Fort Worth Cats play baseball in this pitiful ballpark in a league of teams located in small towns a fraction of the size of Fort Worth.

But, really, this decrepit rundown ballpark is not worthy of any town with pretensions of being a Big City. even before LaGrave Field once again became a rundown eyesore it should have embarrassed locals to have it as their "professional" ballpark.

And then we mix in all the financial shenanigans associated with LaGrave Field. This Are the Fort Worth Cats coming back to a restored LaGrave Field? article does not detail any of those shenanigans of the past.

But, the article does make mention of present day shenanigans. Such as in the following...

The Fort Worth Cats could be coming back to the ballpark north of downtown. Jim Lane, a Tarrant Regional Water District Board member, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Tuesday he expected the board to vote on a contract next week that would bring back the team and restore the stadium.
“Hopefully we’ll be approving a contract to bring the Cats back,” Lane said.

Few other details were available Tuesday afternoon. Water district spokesman Chad Lorance said nothing definitive had been set for the meeting.

The water district agreed to swap the property with the previous owners, Houston-based Panther Acquisition Partners, last July.

Read the entire article for all the land swap shenanigan details.

Now, my memory may not remember all the details, but was not TRWD board member, Jim Lane, instrumental in a previous multi-million dollar deal which helped rescue one of his friends from the bankrupt financial straits he was in as a result of the previous LaGrave Cats failure? And didn't that TRWD deal result in some of that LaGrave land turning into the world's first drive-in movie theater of the 21st century, located adjacent to the now defunct LaGrave Field?

And then there was that more recent TRWD land swap, referenced in this Star-Telegram article, where land currently under Trinity River levees was swapped for other land, all assessed in the millions.

By what criteria is this property value assessed? What with this property all located in the industrial wasteland location of the imaginary island, which likely will never be developed to any higher quality level than what we currently see, unless somehow the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision finally becomes managed in an effective, responsible, timely, properly engineered fashion.

And why is the Tarrant Regional Water District involved in all this property speculation? Let alone having anything to do with reviving an old baseball park...

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