Saving Civic

I think I know a grand total of five people who have ever lived in the State of Oregon, but just about all of them are big into conservation and preservation and all of that good stuff. They must be anomalies, however, because Eugene, Oregon officials look to be getting rid of a 70 year-old minor league ballpark everyone seems to like:

The Eugene Emeralds lost their baseball game Sunday afternoon, their four runs falling short of Tri-City’s five. But Civic Stadium scored a shutout.

In an admittedly unscientific survey of baseball fans — some slathering relish and
mustard on hot dogs or hamburgers, others religiously keeping their scorecards, and one too young to talk — no one was in favor of letting the 70-year-old ballpark go the way of the other baseball park dinosaurs.

For those who haven’t been keeping score, the future of Civic Stadium, built in 1938 by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression, is up for grabs.

Well, maybe not everyone. Despite the loving tone of the article, some random Googling indicates that the joint has seen better days. The owner -- the school board, not some greedy corporation -- doesn't want it anymore. The team doesn't wanna play there anymore. Finally, the putative replacement is being built for the University of Oregon, not specifically for the for-profit Emeralds, so the usual public/private funding battle is not currently raging. In short, beyond the handful of folks interviewed for the linked article, there isn't much to suggest that the place is high on anyone's preservation list.

But maybe it should be. According to its Wikipedia page, Civic is the eighth oldest ballpark still hosting a professional team in the country. That seems fairly amazing for a building built in the late 30s, but I guess that's how we roll these days. A full history can be found here. A review of the place can be found here.

There are still those who want to save Civic. Click here to join, support, or at least gawk at the cause.