The minor-league baseball stadium in Schaumburg will cost nearly $5 million more than village officials estimated when they first announced plans in April to finance the ballpark with public tax dollars, village officials said Tuesday.
Without discussion Tuesday night, Schaumburg village trustees unanimously approved a final contract with Turner Construction Co., Arlington Heights, that lets the contractor spend up to $11.97 million to build the stadium.
The price tag originally was estimated at $7 million, based on costs to build minor-league stadiums in communities outside the Chicago area, officials said.
Since the initial announcement, Schaumburg officials have maintained that they expected the cost to be closer to $10 million.
“When you are building something like (a baseball stadium) in a smaller venue and doing a bare-bones project, ($7 million) might be a closer number,” said acting village manager Ken Fritz, “but building a project like that in Schaumburg, it doesn’t surprise me that it would cost a little more.”
“The $7 million figure was strictly estimate and guesstimate,” Trustee Pat Riley said. “I never reviewed documents that led me to believe that we could (build) it for as little as $7 million.”
Schaumburg officials attributed the $11.97 million figure to upgrades they decided to add to the project, such as a brick exterior, extra skyboxes, individual seats rather than aluminum benches and a landscaped berm between the stadium and some neighboring houses.
“We want to make a statement,” Mayor Al Larson said. “We have our name on it, and we want it to reflect that.”
The construction cost also does not include an estimated $4.1 million the village and the Park District agreed to share to buy the land and pay for other improvements, such as paving the west parking lot and running sewer and water lines to the site.
“When we first looked at this, we were looking at a stripped-down stadium, one that did not have some of the features (now planned),” said Trustee Tom Dailly. “We don’t build anything cheap around here. We make businesses build good, quality stuff. We needed to enforce (that same standard) on ourselves.”
As for any impact on taxpayers, Trustee George Dunham noted that village sales taxes would cover the stadium’s cost.
“It’s been said and repeated many, many times that property taxes are not involved here,” Dunham said. “The (sales-tax) revenue stream is able to support this. . . . Personally, I don’t see any problems.”
But some shoppers who were asked their opinions Tuesday said they were miffed their Schaumburg sales-tax dollars were being used to finance something that could bring more traffic to the suburbs.
“It’s already packed as it is,” Charles Mash, 37, of Streamwood said after shopping at a Schaumburg clothing store. “I don’t see why I should pay for (the stadium) when I don’t even want it here.”
The facility will have 5,000 stadium seats and 2,000 lawn seats. Crews have started grading the land and are expected to lay out the field in two weeks and begin pouring concrete within a month, Fritz said.
The contract with Turner specifies that the contractor finishes the ballpark by May 15, or the village and park district will levy a penalty of $2,500 per day for the first week and $5,000 per day thereafter.
