Birmingham City Council OKs $4.5 million more for Rickwood Field improvements
The minor league Birmingham Barons and the Montgomery Biscuits play a game in Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., Wednesday, May 29, 2019. Major League Baseball will stage a Negro Leagues tribute game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, on June 20, 2024, between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals. The game will honor Hall of Famer Willie Mays, a Birmingham native who began his professional career with the team in 1948.
By Virginia Martin/BirminghamWatch
The Birmingham City Council on Tuesday secured funding for improvements at Rickwood Field in preparation for the MLB coming to town next summer for a tribute game.
Councilors approved an agreement for the city PACE Board to issue $4.5 million in bonds through PNC bank. It also during the year has approved several allocations totaling about $2.5 million for renovations at the field, and it recently approved allocations of $150,000 a year for three years to the Friends of Rickwood Field. The field is owned by the city and maintained by the nonprofit Friends group.
The MLB chose Rickwood Field, the country’s oldest surviving baseball field, to host its “2024 MLB at Rickwood Field, A Tribute to the Negro Leagues” game next June. Just a few days before that, the field will host its Rickwood Classic, which will feature the Birmingham Barons playing the Montgomery Biscuits.
Councilor Carol Clarke, whose District 8 includes Rickwood, thanked the city for helping to fund the construction.
“I’m really glad we’re doing this because they were trying to raise money. Inflation affected the amount of the construction that was required, so it’s more than double what … they had intended to have to spend,” Clarke said.
She also asked the city in the coming months to share a bit of love with the Rising-West Princeton community around Rickwood. She said that, before people from across the country come for a visit, the neighborhood needed to be spruced up, including cleaning storm drains and resurfacing some roads.
Visitors to the field mostly park throughout the neighborhood. Rickwood Field, built in 1910, wasn’t built with modern parking concerns in mind.
A proposed Bessemer data center faces new hurdles: a ‘road to nowhere’ and the Birmingham darter
With the City Council in Bessemer scheduled to vote Tuesday on a “hyperscale” data center, challenges from an environmental group and the Alabama Department of Transportation present potential obstacles for the wildly unpopular project.
Birmingham Museum of Art’s silver exhibit tells a dazzling global story
Silver and Ceremony is made up of more than 150 suites of silver, sourced from India, and some of their designs.
Mentally ill people are stuck in jail because they can’t get treatment. Here’s what’s to know
Hundreds of people across Alabama await a spot in the state’s increasingly limited facilities, despite a consent decree requiring the state to address delays in providing care for people who are charged with crimes but deemed too mentally ill to stand trial. But seven years since the federal agreement, the problem has only worsened.
Ivey appoints Will Parker to Alabama Supreme Court
Parker fills the court seat vacated by Bill Lewis who was tapped by President Donald Trump for a federal judgeship. The U.S. Senate last month confirmed Lewis as a U.S. district judge.
How Alabama Power kept bills up and opposition out to become one of the most powerful utilities in the country
In one of the poorest states in America, the local utility earns massive profits producing dirty energy with almost no pushback from state regulators.
No more Elmo? APT could cut ties with PBS
The board that oversees Alabama Public Television is considering disaffiliating from PBS, ending a 55-year relationship.
