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Tuesday, December 24, 2002

By The Associated Press

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. -- City leaders say they may condemn historic Point Stadium unless they can get $3.5 million from the state to help completely renovate it.

	Seventy-six-year-old Point Stadium in Johnstown could be condemned after a structural inspection showed that the ballpark's grandstands and bleachers cannot hold large crowds.

A recent structural inspection that showed the ballpark's grandstands and bleachers cannot hold large crowds, the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat reported in Sunday editions.

"We can't open Point Stadium as it is now," said city Councilman Adam Henger, an engineer who chairs the city's Public Assets Committee. "It's a travesty as it stands now."

It wasn't always that way.

Park historians say the stadium was the second in the country to install lights for night games shortly after it was built in 1926, when Johnstown was a booming steel town. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig are said to have played there in exhibition games, as did Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson on Negro League barnstorming tours in 1945.

The stadium lost its main tenant when Tom Sullivan, former owner of the Frontier League Johnstown Johnnies, sold the minor-league club earlier this year.

But the city also uses the stadium to play host to the All American Amateur Baseball Association regular season and national tournament and the Thunder in the Valley motorcycle rally, both major tourist draws for the city, as well as for high school sports and the city's Fourth of July fireworks.

Mayor Don Zucco and other city dignitaries earlier this month met with Gov. Mark Schweiker to ask him to release $3.5 million in capital budget money for the stadium.

But some officials, including state Rep. Ed Wojnaroski, D-Cambria, think the city is lobbying for the money the wrong way. He said they should have done the engineering study before asking for the money, not after.

"Now they're making it sound like we're not going to be able to use [the stadium] anymore," Wojnaroski said. "That's going to have a tremendous impact" on the city's ability to get money.

Still, city officials have all but ruled out using less money to fix only some of the stadium's bigger problems. A section of the grandstand was closed during the baseball season due to safety concerns; the brick wall in left field also collapsed.

"We don't want to do a Band-Aid approach," said city Councilman Nunzio Johncola, former head stadium groundskeeper.

Henger said nothing short of a complete overhaul is needed -- and that could take up to $5 million -- or the city might have no other choice than to condemn the stadium.

"There's a serious concern that may be the case," Henger said. "Quite frankly, the news is not very good."