The years, months and weeks it has taken to reach Tuesday night’s opening of Erlanger Park can now be measured in days and even hours.
Jason Freier is the managing owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts and the CEO of Hardball Capital, which also operates the Fort Wayne (Indiana) TinCaps and the Columbia (South Carolina) Fireflies. Erlanger Park is the third ballpark that Freier has guided to completion, and he took time Tuesday afternoon on WGOW’s “Sport Talk” to discuss the unique Southside District facility.
Q: Which of your three ballparks was the most challenging to build?
A: “Each one had its own quirks and its own challenges, but by two measures, this has been the most challenging. First off, we were reusing these historical buildings here, and building from scratch is so much easier. Anybody who has ever renovated an old house or something like that knows it’s just twice as hard than it is to build something from scratch. The other thing is that this ballpark is more integrated with the development — the Riverwalk and the buildings that are going to be coming soon in the outfield — and those created challenges.
“I like to joke with people that the longer I’ve done this, the worse I’ve gotten at it. We bought the team in Fort Wayne in 2006 and were playing baseball in a new ballpark three years later. We bought the team in Savannah in 2008 and were playing at a new ballpark in Columbia eight years later in 2016. For this one, we bought this team in 2015, and it will open 11 years after we bought the team.”