Anchorage Daily News

Anchorage Mayor George Wuerch has a vision: a minor league baseball stadium in Far North Bicentennial Park.

Wuerch said on Friday he was offering the idea of professional minor league ball to illustrate a broader issue. The big, mostly wild, urban park has much potential, he said, and it would be shortsighted to ban development there.

A pair of Anchorage Assembly members have a proposal to allow the bitterly contested construction of Little League fields in the park in return for a prohibition on most future development there. The mayor characterized it as putting about 4,000 acres off limits in return for roughly 30 acres of ball fields.

"We need to have the vision to think beyond four Little League fields," Wuerch said.

But Dennis Mattingly, founder and general manager of the Anchorage Bucs baseball club, said there's only a remote chance a minor league team would work here.

"We're too far out of the mainstream for the minor leagues," he said. "It is too costly."

The Anchorage Bucs are in the Alaska Baseball League, a summer league for college players.

Mattingly said he has looked into bringing a minor league team to Alaska several times over the years, but no one was interested. He talked about it at length with the general manager of the San Diego Padres, who is a former Anchorage Buc. He even enlisted Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan in the effort.

The biggest problem is the travel costs an Alaskan minor league team would have to shoulder, he said.

"They are not making the kind of money to afford that kind of travel," he said.

"A" level teams often travel by bus to their games. To have a higher level AA or AAA team, Mattingly said, the longer season would run into weather conflicts, and franchise costs alone could be a $7 million or $8 million, on top of the cost of a stadium.

Wuerch agreed it may not work to bring professional baseball to Anchorage, but he believes that it could be at least worth a try. He views his idea as a longer-term effort in which private sponsors and donations could be used to build a stadium that all local ball teams could use, as has been done elsewhere.

Wuerch said the notion is just in the "small talk" phase and he needs to find out more.

The mayor said he would not pursue the idea until after the spring mayoral election. But the question of Far North Bicentennial Park's future is an immediate one, he said, in light of the proposal by two Assembly members to put limits on development there in return for the construction of the controversial Little League Fields.

Currently the question of whether to build Little League fields in the park is set for a citywide vote in April, as a result of a citizens' petition drive. But if the Assembly baseball plan goes through, that would be pulled from the ballot.

That should not happen, the mayor said. "The real (question) is the citizens' right to vote on the future of Bicentennial Park," he said.

Assemblyman Allan Tesche, one of the sponsors of the proposal, said that Wuerch is wrong to say the ordinance would lock up the park. It proposes to change the park's master plan to say "no further clearing of land, or draining or filling of wetlands shall be allowed within Far North Bicentennial Park." There would be exceptions for maintenance or expansion of the existing trails, expansion of the Hilltop Ski Area, and public safety.

But, he said, even if this ordinance passed, a future Assembly could change the park plan to allow projects.

He said he has doubts about the minor league stadium, including whether the public would allow it.

The issue of whether to just build the Little League fields in the park has bitterly divided Anchorage, Tesche noted.

Supporters said the city should build fields on land it owns already, and the park site fit what the Simonian Little League needed. People opposed said that the city could put fields elsewhere and that the park is too uniquely valuable to be nibbled away through development.

Tesche characterizes the proposed ordinance as a compromise that would allow work to start immediately on the baseball fields and also would raise the bar on development to reflect concern over the park being lost a piece at a time.

And having it on the ballot will just lead to further divisive battles over the issue, he said.

"At some point an official has to say this issue is hurting the community," Tesche said.

Reporter Sean Cockerham can be reached at 907-257-4343 or scockerham@adn.com.