Ad panel accepts donation
The Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission voted unanimously Monday to accept a donation of nearly 15 acres of land that was formerly part of the Boys & Girls Club of Hot Springs.
The land, worth an estimated $222,550 to $581,598, includes multiple baseball fields of various sizes, restroom facilities, a concessions building, greenspaces and off-street parking.
The donation is pending city approval of a lot split to separate the baseball fields from the property where the former Boys & Girls Club building is located.
The Hot Springs Planning Commission will hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. May 10 at City Hall, 133 Convention Blvd., to consider the lot split request for the property located at 109 W. Belding. The lot split would divide the prop-
erty into two parcels, one encompassing the former BGCHS building, which is being conveyed to Champion Christian College, and the other to include the baseball fields.
Representatives of the college said last week the building, during the day, will serve as an adjunct to the college campus at 600 Garland Ave., then operate as an all-inclusive community center in the afternoons, while serving as the home of its basketball and volleyball teams in the evenings.
The commission will own the property “free and clear,” Visit Hot Springs CEO Steve Arrison has previously said, with a single stipulation from the original deed back from the land transfer in 1946. That stipulation requires the property “shall be used forever for the sole and exclusive purpose of maintaining thereon a public playground and/or public recreational center.”
The property is steeped in the city’s Major League Baseball spring training history, and is the site of several stops on the Hot Springs Historic Baseball Trail, which was created by the ad commission.
Once known as Majestic Field, the property was developed in 1909 as the Boston Red Sox training center and was also used by the Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Dodgers, according to one of the historic markers. Babe Ruth, Cy Young, Tris Speaker, Smoky Joe Wood and other Major Leaguers trained there.
Jackie Robinson played an exhibition game at the location, then known as Jaycee Field, on Oct. 22, 1953, according to another marker, which terms it “one of the most important events in Hot Springs history.”