Baseball Club ready to fund new facility

By ANDREW BALKO

The Commercial Review

Plans have shifted some. Progress is being made. Now the fundraiser is live.

Jay County Baseball Club is moving along with the process to create an outdoor-sports facility for Jay County and it has launched a fundraiser through the crowdfunding platform Zeffy to help achieve its goal.

The club announced plans in early April to build the new facility because of the growing demand for youth sports in the community and a lack of places to practice and individuals to develop their skills.

“We are doing it because we see it as a need,” said club board member Brady Johnson.

“We’ve got the West Jay Community Center and the Jay Community Center and neither one of those facilities are geared for non-hardwood sports,” board member Kyle Teeter added.

Club president Todd Farr said the facility is planned to be more than just for the club team, but rather would be more community based for those who live in or near Jay County. The plan is to offer memberships and the ability to rent the space out for local recreational teams to practice.

While the prices of memberships and renting the facility are not set as of now, the board of directors is comparing price ranges of similar facilities further away to try and set a price point. So far, board members believe they will be significantly lower than what other facilities charge and are also experimenting with various discounts.

“A lot of our price points and everything is going to be determined by how we fundraise,” Teeter said. “If we can fundraise and get the community involved and raise the money and have this paid for, then we're not looking to make any money on this. 

“We just want to provide something for kids in the community. So the more we can raise, the more the community gets behind what we're doing and with this building, the cheaper that stuff gets.”

The original plan called for the organization to build the facility new. After receiving quotes on the cost for such a project, the club pivoted to purchasing a building off of county road 500 west that roughly fit the dimensions of the original plan.

“It’s a little smaller than what we’d like, but this fits our needs and it checked off a lot of things in our box,” Farr said. “It was a lot cheaper as well.”

Jay County Baseball Club is in the process of purchasing the building, and will close on Sept. 3 with the cost of the building coming out to $575,000. It has already raised the funds for a down payment but have launched the fundraising campaign to help pay for the cost of the rest of the building and the renovations inside.

Most of the plans for the interior have stayed the same as the original plan with an office space (30 feet by 40 feet), a golf simulator, a classroom area for teams and a main room (60 feet by 90 feet) with turf and six batting cages. The biggest difference is the addition of an area for arm care that includes a plyometric training wall, arm bands and weights in the middle section of the building that includes the classroom and golf simulator.

The club also still plans to have hit tracking technology such as Rapsodo and Hit Trax technology for real-time analysis to aid in player development.

After going through closing on Sept. 3, the club will gain access to the building on Jan. 1 because of the structure of the lease with the current owner. Once it gets access to the building, it hopes to quickly install turf and netting for the cages, which could be in less than a week once they have funds.

The total cost of technology, equipment and labor to outfit the building comes out to about $320,000.

The club has set a goal to fundraise $900,000 by the end of the year to help with costs of the building and turning it into an outdoor-sports facility. It has already raised enough money for a down payment on the building.

To donate, supporters can look at the campaign by going to bit.ly/ClubhouseFundraiser or check out Jay County Baseball Club’s Facebook page. For more information, email [email protected].