Members of the citizens review committee charged with overseeing the city's stake in the downtown baseball stadium said yesterday that they are encouraged by work at the ballpark.
"Once they got restarted, they certainly were prepared to move ahead," said committee member Bill Kay. "It seems like it's on pace."
The committee chairman, Eric Prior, said he is happy with construction work, but he is concerned about the team's ability to sell enough tickets to pay its debts to the city and banks.
"It's going to be a really nice stadium," Prior said. "The key is to make sure we get people out here to the ballpark to see the games. I think there's some work to be done as far as selling tickets."
The committee toured the ballpark yesterday afternoon, seeing for the first time work that has been done since construction resumed in October. Work on the stadium had been stopped for months while Billy Prim, the team owner of the Winston-Salem Dash, negotiated first with his former business partner, Andrew "Flip" Filipowski, then with the city to get enough money to finish the stadium.
Construction on the $48.7 million ballpark is about 86 percent complete, said Chuck Hutchings, the senior project manager for Samet Corp., the general contractor at the stadium.
As members of the Citizens Baseball Stadium Review Committee walked through the ballpark yesterday, Hutchings pointed out work that had been completed.
Since October, crews have erected light poles around the outfield walls, framed the press box and all but finished the row of suites that line the second level of the stadium.
Committee member J. Aubrey Kirby, who came to the committee with decades of experience in architecture and project management, said he was impressed that Samet Corp. had taken care to protect work that already had been completed while construction was stopped.
"I'm just tickled, quite frankly," Kirby said. "I think, if anything, the stadium is ahead of schedule."
The committee was established this summer by the Winston-Salem City Council after the council agreed to contribute an additional $15.7 million to help finish construction on the stadium. The city already had given the project $12 million in 2007.
The ballpark, at the corner of Peters Creek Parkway and First Street, will be home to the Dash, a Class A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox. Construction is expected to be complete by April 1.
lgraff@wsjournal.com
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