A long time coming

Stadium hit some potholes on the road to completion.

Winston-Salem Journal: In the summer and fall of 2003, city leaders and the new owners of Winston-Salem's minor league baseball team started toying with the idea of building a baseball stadium downtown to revitalize the then-struggling city center.

A new minor league ballpark was in the works for downtown Greensboro, finally under way after much public debate there. Winston-Salem was in the middle of plans for Unity Place, a would-be $87 million complex of theaters, shops and homes at Fourth and Broad streets downtown, which also was to become headquarters of Krispy Kreme.

That fall, as team owners Billy Prim and Andrew "Flip" Filipowski tried to sell city officials on the benefits of a downtown stadium, Mayor Allen Joines told the Winston-Salem Journal that the city could not help pay for the ballpark. The initial costs were estimated at around $15 million, and Joines' feelings were clear:

"I am firmly convinced that citizens do not want public money used," he said.