Green Bay Loses Baseball Stadium As Part Of Downtown Development Project

A $10 million summer league baseball stadium that was supposed to be part of a downtown Green Bay development project will now be built in the village of Ashwaubenon, near Lambeau Field.

Big Top Baseball — which owns the Green Bay Bullfrogs, along with other Wisconsin teams such as the Madison Mallards, the Kenosha Kingfish and the Wisconsin Rapids Raptors — announced the decision Wednesday. It reportedly took the team owners a month to fix the deal with Ashwaubenon after four years of wrangling with the Green Bay Common Council.

Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt said, “that hurt.” But he admitted the development project, known as the Shipyard, where the Bullfrogs were supposed to have their new home, is complicated. Besides the baseball stadium, plans include a soccer field, an office building, restaurants and housing.

The proposed project site is located in Green Bay’s Broadway District on the city’s near west side on a parcel of riverfront land that has been vacant for nearly 40 years.

Despite losing one of its key players, Schmitt maintained the project isn’t dead.

“We just have to get some council people that believe in that area and will expedite something,” he said.

According to Schmitt, Big Top Baseball got frustrated with a series of delays on the council.

“We held this thing up in June for a month. Then in October it was amended.”

While Schmitt said he still believes the downtown location would be better for the Bullfrogs, he understands that Ashwaubenon offered what he called a “clean deal.”

Schmitt said the delays included relatively minor issues.

“It was all this nit picking on how much are you going to make on concessions? And how much are we going to make? And how much can we get on parking? And how much can we get on naming rights?”

The Bullfrogs were offering to pay a 20-year lease at $225,000 annually.

It’s not clear what kind of impact the team’s decision will have in terms of lost opportunity, said David Helpap, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay who watches local politics.

“Big, ‘catalytic’ projects in particular areas only come along so often,” Helpap said, adding that he thinks the vacant lot and the Shipyard project have a lot of potential.

“The city has had this land available for 35 years. And I think this would have been a big anchor to the Broadway District. It would have helped out the nearby neighborhood,” he said.

Because there are many neighboring communities, Helpap said Green Bay must compete not only with Ashwaubenon but with places like Howard, De Pere, and Bellevue.

“You don’t want that reputation where ‘We’re bad for business, we’re slow.’ Because at the end of the day you need this to keep your city moving forward,” Helpap said. He’ll be watching closely for the outcomes of a scheduled Feb. 10 Common Council vote and this April’s general election for city officials. “It will be interesting to see what elected officials do. If there will be impacts at the polls.”

Green Bay did get some good news for another project.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has tentatively given the city permit approval to restore a swimming beach at its Bay Beach Amusement Park. Schmitt said there is a 30-day comment period on the proposal. He said he expects the DNR to give its approval. If it does, he said the beach on the banks of the bay could be operational by the summer of 2019. It would include docks, a boardwalk, and possibly a changing house.