{"id":2101,"date":"2022-09-03T13:08:54","date_gmt":"2022-09-03T18:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=2101"},"modified":"2022-09-03T14:21:19","modified_gmt":"2022-09-03T19:21:19","slug":"field-of-pipe-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=2101","title":{"rendered":"Field of pipe dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Goosy, a friend of mine who is a technological hermit living in California (his technology is\u00a0limited to a television and land-line telephone), knows that I\u2019m a huge Royals baseball fan. He\u00a0calls me on a regular basis to see how I\u2019m doing. He asked if I was going to watch the big\u00a0baseball game in Iowa, referring to the Field of Dreams game between the Cincinnati Reds and\u00a0the Chicago Cubs. He was shocked when I told him I didn\u2019t watch last year, and I wouldn\u2019t be\u00a0watching this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not a Cubs fan nor a Reds fan,\u201d I told him. \u201cAnd there are so many other problems with\u00a0this corny promotion that it has literally become a field of \u2018dreams.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In a politically timed effort, two days before the big game, Iowa Governor Reynolds handed\u00a0$12.5 million dollars to the city of Dyersville to build a stadium near the original Field of\u00a0Dreams site. The project has already received $11 million in state money earlier this year to\u00a0connect water and sewer infrastructure from the City of Dyersville to the movie site. The money\u00a0for all projects came from the American Rescue Plan, a federal law intended to \u201cprovide\u00a0emergency grants, lending, and investment to hard-hit small businesses.\u201d The intent of the\u00a0American Rescue Plan was saving small businesses. Building a major league stadium in a rural,\u00a0isolated area is anything but small.<\/p>\n

So, why build a stadium in a corn field where one already exists? The current site has a capacity\u00a0for 8,000 fans, the proposed permanent stadium will seat 3,000, which can expand to 8,000 if\u00a0another major league game is played there. If two major league baseball games have successfully\u00a0been played there, why build a new one?<\/p>\n

The city administrator of Dyersville, Mick Michel, was quoted as saying that the grant \u201callows\u00a0for development opportunities like a hotel and a permanent MLB stadium, along with a future\u00a0convention center and other opportunities to service the needs at that site.\u201d That\u2019s a pretty big\u00a0dream he\u2019s having about the future. The big question about expansion is: \u201cIf they build it, will\u00a0they come?\u201d<\/p>\n

Several opinions from experts say the area cannot support this project. The city of 4,100 is not in\u00a0a position to provide enough restaurants, hotels, and other support businesses for a project of this\u00a0magnitude. Considering the low unemployment rate of Dubuque County, Iowa, 2.2% as of May\u00a02022, a commonsense check will indicate that area businesses will not have a strong cache of\u00a0potential employees to work in the low-wage food, hotel, and related businesses.<\/p>\n

Another potential problem is future funding. Ninety percent of the funding for the stadium will\u00a0come from various public funds, aka taxpayer revenue. Michel and other economic development\u00a0entities in the northwest part of the state believe that if a stadium is built, it will encourage\u00a0additional private investment in the project. It\u2019s just a theory; there is no data to support the\u00a0enthusiasm. A hotel on the site will surely expect to be built using whatever public funds are\u00a0available, including the use of tax increment financing [TIF], a heavily abused development\u00a0option that delays a developer\u2019s property tax responsibility into the future, far beyond the property\u2019s prime tax rates, usually ten to twenty years or more.<\/p>\n

Travel Dubuque, a tourist information center, estimates the grant proposal will create eighty-one\u00a0jobs. There is no information on whether those jobs are seasonal or permanent. Baseball is not a\u00a0year-round business. Will employees be able to collect unemployment benefits from November\u00a0through March when the ground is too wet, frozen, or snowy to work on? Probably not, this isn\u2019t heaven; it\u2019s Iowa.<\/p>\n

A severe problem with this permanent project is its damage to the environment. Dan Evans, the\u00a0COO of the group that now owns the Field of Dreams site, said that the group is \u201cdeeply\u00a0committed to preserving the romantic experience of the Field of Dreams, including the views, the\u00a0baseball diamond, the farmhouse, and the cornfields. Those images will never change.\u201d Planting\u00a0corn on the same ground year after year is not being the best steward of Iowa farmland. In a Des\u00a0Moines Register article, it was noted that nutrients are necessary to keep the corn tall and green.\u00a0Nutrients, also known as chemicals, leach into the streams and groundwater that Iowans rely\u00a0upon for survival. If Ray Kinsella saw ghosts coming out of the cornfield, he would have rotated his corn with hemp.<\/p>\n

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Goosy, a friend of mine who is a technological hermit living in California (his technology is\u00a0limited to a television and land-line telephone), knows that I\u2019m a huge Royals baseball fan. He\u00a0calls me on a regular basis to see how I\u2019m … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1009,1010,1013,1008,1007,1011,1014,1012],"class_list":["post-2101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-rescue-plan","tag-city-of-dyersville","tag-dan-evans","tag-field-of-dreams","tag-iowa-governor-reynolds","tag-mick-michel","tag-ray-kinsella","tag-travel-dubuque"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2101"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2107,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions\/2107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}