Mitch Barnhart spoke today at the Kentucky Baseball press conference and discussed the possibility of a new baseball stadium.
[I]On facilities …[/I]
“I don’t think you can look around our program and see the things that we have built and say we’re not committed to the growth of our Olympic sports programs and the facilities that they have. All those things fall in a master plan for the university, which we are a part of, and at different places along the way, it would have been really nice to maximize moments. We probably wished we could have done something in ’05-’06, ’06-’07 and that era and we just couldn’t. It wasn’t available to us at that time for a lot of reasons, funding models, those kinds of things. And then there are a lot of things that happened in terms of financing of the university and things that go on and now we’re fighting back.
“We’ve done a good job, I think, of getting facilities for our programs and we’ve been able to pay cash for those. Our plan going forward is to make sure we fit into the master plan of the university and then make sure that we’re positioned properly to take the resources financially that we’ve grown or we’re going to get financing for one way or another or the combination of both to do something as quickly as possible for Gary and his team. We know our facility needs some help, whether it’s there or whether it’s moved to Alumni Drive or something like that. Obviously those are probably our two options and how we make that all work as fast as possible is critically important to the ability to help Gary.
“That’s why the five-year deal was really important, amongst other things, in terms of stability of the relationship Gary has with our administration and the university, that’s one thing. The other thing is to make sure that do our part to facilitate the things that he needs in terms of capital projects and things to move forward. We’re committed to that. We’ve done a lot of things in facilities. We’ve only got a handful left, in addition to Commonwealth Stadium, that (UK needs to improve to) really put us where we need to be in the Southeastern Conference. Baseball is primo on that list.”
[I]On if there was momentum for a stadium after not getting a postseason host selection …[/I]
“I don’t think there is any mystery that we were disappointed we didn’t get to host. There wasn’t any mystery in that. I was disappointed not for us, but for Gary and the coaches and the players. They are the ones that I was most disappointed for. I was disappointed for our fans as well because I think they truly wanted to come and be a part of a very special time in postseason play. I think that there is a group of folks that want to help us move this thing forward. You get a mixed bag of answers when you ask why we didn’t get selected. People point to different things but you never know. The reality of it is that we had a heck of a good ball club and they went up to Gary, Ind., and came up short in one of the most memorable games that I’ll ever be involved in. I listened to the game from Destin, Fla., all the way to Lexington driving home from SEC meetings on radio. It was an amazing thing to listen to and obviously I wish it would have turned out differently but there are memories in that. When I think about Michael Williams catching 47 or 48 innings in a weekend that is unbelievable to think he gave that to Kentucky. That was a great effort and Gary (Henderson) has talked about those kinds of things and kids loving to play the game and loving to do it for the guys in the locker room, the coaches and other people around the program.
“I think a couple of things I want to touch on momentum wise is people enjoy our coaches. They are really good people and quality folks. You want to see good things happen to good people. There is momentum out of that and people want to help. They will step up and do some things necessary to get some things done. The other thing, I think it signifies a couple things really important. We want to continue to put Kentucky in the best light possible as far as facilities, recruiting and all those sorts of things. We can only do that if we have great people and they stay and we don’t turn this into a transitional place. We want to bring in people that make their home here and I am talking about more than just a ballpark. I’m talking about for their families and things. This is a good place to bring your family. This is a good place to live. That makes that part really, really good. We have to make sure we do our part to give him the best chance to do all of that. That is our goal out of that. I have been very clear with our university administration and the people we need help from in terms of this process. There are some pieces to the puzzle left facility wise that we have to finish up if we want to be who we want to be in this expanded league.”
[I]On if he has a time table on new stadium plans …[/I]
“Quickly. We obviously have to move quick. It takes probably six to eight months to actually get a set of plans you can build off of and the architectural plans and the real working plans. You can draw pictures. You can do those quickly, but to actually get it takes six to eight months and a solid period of time to build it. It depends if you are going to go off the site that you are on or somewhere else. If you are going to be where you are right now or build on a new site. Those are two separate issues because you can continue to play in the spot (you currently are). You are not retrofitting anything if you go someplace else. Those become issues for you. Then how do you fit into the university landscape. I think that is coming down the pipe fairly quickly as far as what it wants to do with its master plan. I think that is coming rather rapidly which will help us determine where we need to go and what we need to do. More than anything else I want to make sure it helps Gary get what he wants for this baseball program. We don’t want to just do it to do it and put a band-aid on it. That is not the purpose. The purpose is to have the ability to last the test of time a little bit. We have done band-aids before and they are probably not our best plan. We have to figure out how to create a facility that can stand for a while and get us a chance to be out there for a while and be here beyond here and me.”
[I]On if he sees the project taking place in the next couple of years …[/I]
“Yeah, I think so. I would be disappointed if we weren’t there.”
[I]On architectural plans for a new stadium…[/I]
“No, we’ve got some things that we’ve looked at. Nothing really architectural plans, we’ve looked at some pictures that we’ve had drawn up but nothing is really concrete, so to speak. But we can move, once we get a direction, I think we can move rather rapidly in terms of that process. This isn’t something new to us, in terms of building, we know how to build and we know what to do once we have the opportunity, we just have to make sure we move it along.”
