In advance of the All-Star Game that takes place at Target Field next summer, the Minnesota Twins have asked Major League Baseball for a $300,000 favor. The Twins want the league to pitch in money for a renovation of little league fields behind Neighborhood House and the El Rio Vista Rec Center on St. Paul’s West Side.
“The Twins are awaiting notice from the MLB,” said Neighborhood House director Armando Camacho.
Camacho learned to speak English by playing football on those athletic fields. Camacho, a Puerto Rican who moved to the West Side when he was six years old, went on to play football for two years at the University of St. Thomas, and eventually moved back to the West Side to run Neighborhood House, one of the city’s oldest and most respected community organizations.
Those ball fields — now known as the Gilbert De La O. ball fields after the longtime Neighborhood House community icon who still walks his dog there daily — mean the world to Camacho and the West Side Boosters, who oversee football and baseball programming there. All the more reason, he figures, to tear them up.
The plan is ambitious. He’d like to pour $2 million into a complete renovation, complete with artificial turf, lighting and fencing. Studio 5 Architects has already donated a free design. Two West Side construction firms, PCL and Bolander, have been guiding Camacho through the ins and outs of construction particulars.
“I’ve been working on this for five years, since I came back to the West Side to run Neighborhood House,” Camacho said. “Those ball fields kept me off the streets.”
How realistic is his goal? On Wednesday, he’ll find out. The city of St. Paul’s Capital Improvement Budget committee has recommended that the mayor and city council allocate more than $1.7 million toward the project in 2014 and 2015. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman delivers his annual budget address at noon Wednesday at Matsuura Machinery, 325 Randolph Ave. Camacho will be there, and he’ll be all ears.
“We’re not telling government to fix these fields on their own,” said Camacho, who is keeping his fingers crossed that Major League Baseball will also deliver.