WKSU News: Cleveland pitching in for renovation of League Park

Tuesday, February 8, 2011 Cleveland pitching in for renovation of League Park City commits $5 million to the midtown site; hopes for another $3.5 million from private donors Story by PHIL TORRES

League Park -- and surrounding Cleveland -- as they looked at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Cleveland is getting ready to spend the first nearly 400-thousand dollars onthe renovation of historic League Park.

The city has committed 5 million dollars to the first-phase of the plan to recreate the baseball park where the Indians first played in 1891 – with legendary pitcher Cy Young on the mound.

The last Major League game was played there 55 years later, and most of League Park is gone. But the city hopes to recreate it as a community park in the city’s midtown Hough neighborhood.

Mayor Frank Jackson’s chief of staff, Ken Silliman, says the new plans are less elaborate than those of former Mayor Jane Campbell.

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Phase one will restore a ball field and incorporate what little remains of the original League Park, including the ticket building and a grandstand wall. Cleveland hopes to raise as much as 3.5 million dollars in private donations for the second phase of the restoration.