Had it not been for local leaders seeing the “bigger picture” when former West Virginia University Athletics Director Oliver Luck proposed a new baseball stadium for the Mountaineers, this weekend’s NCAA Baseball Regionals would not be taking place in Morgantown.
In fact, the WVU baseball program may have become a part of history.
“My first response was ‘what do I want with a ball field?’” recalled former Monongalia County Commissioner Eldon Callen upon hearing Luck’s pitch for a stadium back in 2012.
Callen listened to where the stadium would be situated at University Town Centre, about the possibility for a new interchange off Interstate 79, and potential for development in the immediate area around the stadium, but it wasn’t until Callen looked at the proximity of Mylan Park to that land that he began to see the bigger picture.
“I looked at the county as a whole and saw Mylan Park sitting there in the center of the county and my eyes got bigger and bigger,” Callen commented as he began to think of the economic possibilities on the western side of I-79.
“The west side made the TIF (Tax Increment Finance) possible. That made the STIF (Sales Tax Increment Finance) possible, which is what financed the ballpark and half of the interchange.”
Since Monongalia County Ballpark’s opening in 2016, the area around the stadium has developed with hotels, restaurants, retail outlets and even car dealerships.
County commissioners also hinted at a announcement coming later this summer for more development on the western side of I-79.
“Eldon’s vision for the west side of the county, I thought, was 25 years ahead of its time,” Luck said Wednesday. “I bought 100 percent into the idea that the western end of the county needed development.”
While Callen’s vision focused on the potential economic benefits to the county as a whole, Luck was also taking a big picture look at the Mountaineers’ baseball program.
As, WVU prepared for the transition from the Big East to the Big XII, WVU’s baseball facility — Hawley Field — was not going to be an adequate venue for a conference that boasts some of the best college baseball in the country. For Luck, it was time to either go all in or drop the curtain on the Mountaineers’ baseball program.
“I called a meeting at the Coliseum and we had to decided were we going to drop the baseball program or were we going to make a complete, 100 percent commitment to excellence? I didn’t want any programs at the university to be playing with one hand tied behind their backs,” Luck said.
Obviously, the determination was made to continue the program, invest and set some lofty goals.
“The (NCAA) Regionals was something that Oliver and I talked about,” Callen recalled Wednesday. “Oliver said ‘if we can build this, we can have regionals.’”
Now, a baseball program that cold have been dropped is nationally ranked and hosting an NCAA Regional at a stadium built on an undeveloped, abandoned mine site because of the vision Callen, Luck and others had for the program and Monongalia County.
“If you think back to what used to be at where the mall is today, it was an old mine. It was a great concept but we needed a lot of people to get together to figure out how to put this TIF together, the county needed to get involved, the state needed to get involved,” Luck pointed out.