It’s official — no really — Columbia’s 90-year-old Capital City Stadium is set to be replaced by a new development and will be torn down before summer’s end, as reported by Morgan Hughes for The State.
After almost 10 years of debate, plans of demolishing, and contracts, the minor league baseball field has been sold to a developer who plans to build new apartments + a retail court. The new development coming — most-likely in 2024 — is currently coined as “The Ballpark.”
Let’s break down this new development into numbers:
- 310: The number of apartments to be built at the new mixed-use development.
- 20,000: The square footage of retail space that will house a national sandwich chain, a coffee chain and “a pretty well known sports restaurant.”
- $60,000: The amount the developer will pay to Historic Columbia.
- $250,000: The amount Weddle is required to contribute for a greenway extension from Olympia Park to the new development.
- $1.625 million: The amount Weddle Real Estate Investments paid to buy the property from the City of Columbia.
- $8 million: The amount Weddle will invest in infrastructure improvements
(from left to right) clippings from The State Newspaper on Aug., 15, 2012 + July 27, 2021| Clippings from newspapers.com
Before any construction starts, Historic Columbia will begin to uncover and explore some of the memories left behind. A documentary + oral history of the park will be produced with local filmmaker Lee Ann Kornegay.
While we wait for that to be produced, we found an oral history from 1985 that shares some history of the baseball stadium told by Robert “Bob” Fulton — The voice of the Gamecocks for 50+ years. He was a sports announcer that came to Columbia + broadcasted for the Columbia Reds baseball team — Columbia’s minor league baseball that played at the stadium when it was called Capital City Ball Park.
