New Cold Spring Baseball Park Cages Expect to Have Regional Draw

COLD SPRING -- Fundraising efforts are in full swing to bring a new field house to the Cold Spring Baseball Park.

The Cold Spring Baseball Association is planning to build the facility next to the baseball field where there is currently a skating park and a basketball court.

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Association president Drew VanLoy says the facility was created to provide more opportunity for players and families to stay active and hone their skills across multiple sports.

Obviously this facility will be multi-use so anything you can do on natural grass you can do on this turf. We are hoping to create opportunities for the kids in our community that they've never had before.

Plans for The Cold Spring Cages have been in the works for about 12 years and really picked up steam after an anonymous donor stepped up to help pay for a large portion of the project.

The field house includes turf batting cages, a conference room, locker rooms and new bathrooms.

David Jonas is with the Cold Spring Baseball Association. He says they expect this facility to have a huge impact around central Minnesota, especially during the winter months.

Space is hard to come by. You have all kinds of sports in the winter that are taking up gym space and there are still baseball players who want to get some batting practice in during that time. This facility will be super valuable not just for kids in Cold Spring for in western Stearns County to St. Cloud who are looking for a space like this.

Construction of the field house itself will cost roughly $3.5-million. VanLoy says including the donation, they hope to raise about $5-million which would also help fund renovating the visitors dugout and improving the right field bleachers.

If all goes well they hope to begin construction following the amateur baseball season in September, with hopes of opening the batting cages sometime over the winter.

Once completed the baseball association would donate the facility to the city who would own the building, while the association handles the daily operations.

As for the skate park and the basketball courts, the city plans to move those amenities to another park near the baseball field.