Last swing for saving part of Tiger Stadium
Activists trying to save a corner of historic Tiger Stadium are down to their final at-bats. So they’re opening a last-minute, Internet-based fund-raising effort in a bid to pull off a miracle win.
The Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy is working against a June 1 deadline to come up with $369,000 in cash and proof it can raise $15 million to pay for its preservation project.
The nonprofit conservancy would like to save a dugout-to-dugout corner of the ballpark, about 25% of the stadium structure, and convert it to use as a community center and museum.
But June 1 is only five weeks away, which is the bottom of the ninth in any fund-raising effort. The conservancy has one employee, virtually no money in the bank, and its Web site, www.savetigerstadium.org, won’t be up for another week or so.
Despite the long odds, Gary Gillette, one of about a dozen board members of the conservancy, said recent presidential campaigns have proven the power of the Internet to raise cash in a hurry.
“No one thought five years ago that you could raise enough money to finance a presidential campaign by small donors on the Web,” Gillette said. “Of course, we’re not Barack Obama, but I think there’ll be a similar dynamic. People will say it’s easy to push that PayPal button and just donate $20 or $30 … . There are millions of Tigers fans everywhere.”
If the conservancy doesn’t raise the $369,000 in time and show proof of its ability to raise the $15 million long-term, the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., the city’s development arm, said it will proceed to tear down the entire structure, including the corner the conservancy wishes to save.
Skeptics of the conservancy’s efforts include George Jackson, president of the DEGC, who said Friday he thinks that the conservancy, if well-meaning, has no chance to succeed.
“We don’t need any more pie-in-the-sky financing schemes,” Jackson said. “Every time we come up with a deadline, they come up with a new financial fantasy, and that’s what this is.”
