With Engel Stadium demolition planned by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, local activists and politicians are seeking to delay or alter those plans.
There really are only four or five pro-baseball venues that rival Engel Stadium, the former home to Minor League Baseball, Negro Leagues baseball and barnstorming MLB teams, on the history front. Engel Stadium, built by Joe Engel for his original Chattanooga Lookouts, opened in 1930. Engel was a master promoter, once drawing over 26,000 fans out for a game where he gave away a house to a lucky fan. He also put together the exhibition game with the New York Yankees where a 17-year-old local lass named Jackie Mitchell struck out Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. The ballpark was home to the Lookouts, the Black Lookouts and Choo Choos b(minor-league Negro Leagues teams) or barnstorming visitors like Jackie Robinson. As a ninth-grader, Willie Mays was a Choo Choo before joining the Birmingham Barons; Satchel Paige began his career as a Black Lookout; Harmon Killebrew was a Lookout as a Washington Senators farmhand; Ferguson Jenkins played his final year in the minors here before reaching the majors; and Rogers Hornsby ended his playing career as a Lookout. Engel Stadium was also a community gathering spot: the Rev. Billy Graham preached there to a full house.
But the ballpark fell into disuse after the Lookouts moved to AT&T Park for the 2000 season, and the city grappled with alternative uses for the historic venues. A local group formed to find new uses a la the Friends of Rickwood Field, an effort that did indeed preserve MiLB’s oldest standing ballpark in Birmingham, but those efforts didn’t lead to tangible plans. The city, meanwhile, transferred the property to University of Tennessee-Chattanooga (UTC), which initially declared plans to preserve at least part of the property as an athletic complex.
But those plans became a dramatic makeover of the site into a Women’s Athletics Complex, featuring softball fields, soccer pitches and beach volleyball areas. UTC unveiled renderings last week–like the one showed above–and UTC stressed that elements of the ballpark would be reused, like the roof canopy shown in the above rendering:
A memorial space honoring Engel Stadium’s historic significance to Chattanooga’s sports heritage will be located within the new soccer stadium or at the entrance to the complex….
The University plans an adaptive reuse approach to reclaim and incorporate as much of the materials from the original structure as feasible, particularly Engel’s iconic steel trusses, distinctive brickwork and iconic gates. UTC is also working with the Lookouts to preserve certain elements such as section numbers and parts of the scoreboard to display in their new stadium (Erlanger Park).
Local online activists and politicians aren’t happy about the proposed Engel Stadium demolition, however, and have scoured agreements between the city and the university for a way to block it. Let’s just say the paperwork isn’t as clear as either side would like to think: One 2002 agreement between Chattanooga and UTC calls for the university to return Engel Stadium to the city if it is not used for baseball, while a more recent agreement gives UTC complete control over Engel Stadium demolition. Local politicos express some caution about a total Engel Stadium demolition and say there may be a way to preserve the grandstand, per News Channel 9:
Current Hamilton County Commissioner Lee Helton says he needs to study the 2002 resolution more in-depth, but does have concerns about Engel’s demolition.
“I understand they have to use the field for, you know, construction and building their athletic facility,” Helton says. “But I think there’s room to preserve the actual building.”
(Plug time: Joe Engel and Engel Stadium are prominent in our book, Never a Bad Game: Fifty-Plus Years of the Southern League, by the dean of Southern League writers, Mark McCarter. Check out the August Publications website for a description of the book and how to buy it.)
Rendering courtesy University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
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