Millions donated for construction of new stadium

By Lance Dwyer

A $4 million donation made by 1960 alumnus Stephen Schott put Santa Clara one step closer to building a new baseball park, a project included in the school's $350 million fund raising campaign.

Schott was a pitcher for the Santa Clara baseball team and is the current owner of the Oakland Athletics.

The new baseball park will be located across the street from the Bellomy field on the corner of El Camino Real and Campbell Avenue, according to University Architect Don Akerland. The space designated for the park is currently occupied by buildings used by the Samina Corporation.

The actual completion date of the baseball park is uncertain, although the $4 million donation made by Schott puts the project more than halfway towards its goal. The total budget to construct the park is $7.5 million, according to Vice President of University Relations Jim Purcell.

Once all of the funding is acquired, Akerland said the nine-month construction period will not begin until building plans are completed and approved of.

The projected 1,500 seat grass-field stadium is expected to include chair-back seating, a VIP suite, a clubhouse, locker rooms, a press box and batting cages. However, Akerland said the project is still in the design phase and not all of the plans have been finalized.

"This facility has been a long-time dream and is now a reality," said Schott in a Santa Clara press release last week.

"We intend to build a state-of-the-art stadium," he said. "I am as excited as the rest of the athletic department and alumni about this project."

In a statement released by Santa Clara last week, baseball coach Mark O'Brien said this is an exciting time for the baseball program at Santa Clara.

"We are in the process of building a program that can return Santa Clara University to the College World Series. The construction of a new stadium will be a major factor in our ability to continue to attract the best players in the nation to compete for conference and national championships," O'Brien said.

Last year, home attendance averaged 354 people per game, a slight increase from 307 per game during the previous season, according to Santa Clara athletics archives. The low attendance came despite finishing the season with 31 wins and 26 losses, an improvement from their 25-30 record in 2002.

"The last game I went to, it seemed like there were 20 people there," said junior Marlon Evangelista. "If there's a nice new park, people would be excited to check it out at first and then the team would get that much better with more support. But in the end, I think that a new stadium alone can't really improve the team unless it's really amazing."

Senior Viviana Montoya-Hernandez shared Evangelista's reservations about the stadium's possible impact on the team and questioned the school's decision to allot so much money to the project. She said she doesn't think Santa Clara sports in general have the fan base to support a facility or investment of that magnitude.

"Seven million dollars is a lot of money that the school might want to put in places where the students are asking," Montoya-Hernandez said. "It's possible that the stadium would have an impact on the quality of the team, but it seems like a backwards way of going about it. Why not deal with what we already have, because it's going to take more than a stadium for the team to get stronger."

û Contact Lance Dwyer at (408) 554-4546 or ldwyer@scu.edu.