Hoover Met renamed

[kayman]

Met becomes Regions Park

The City of Hoover and Regions Financial Corporation has just signed a 9-year deal for $1 million to renamed the Hoover Metropolitan Stadium aka the Hoover Met to Regions Park. This also coincides with the Baron's 20th year at the stadium since moving from Rickwood Field in Birmingham.

Now, I've always wondered why Regions hasn't purchased any naming rights to any facility here even though its world headquarters located here. I'm glad they are finally stepping up and placing their name on at 1 sports facility in the state.

[3choBoomer]

Met becomes Regions Park

The City of Hoover and Regions Financial Corporation has just signed a 9-year deal for $1 million to renamed the Hoover Metropolitan Stadium aka the Hoover Met to Regions Park. This also coincides with the Baron's 20th year at the stadium since moving from Rickwood Field in Birmingham.

Now, I've always wondered why Regions hasn't purchased any naming rights to any facility here even though its world headquarters located here. I'm glad they are finally stepping up and placing their name on at 1 sports facility in the state.

[Blazer85]

I definitely think Regions got a good bargain with this one. Naming rights for $1-million spread out over 9 years? That's pretty darn good advertising for a ballpark that's used by one of the nation's top high school football teams (Hoover), a minor-league baseball program, and the SEC Baseball Tournament.

[convulso]

That's pretty darn good advertising for a ballpark that's used by one of the nation's top high school football teams (Hoover), a minor-league baseball program, and the SEC Baseball Tournament.

[Southron]

Too bad they didn't take this opportunity to tear it down and build a new minor league stadium downtown, where it belongs and would contribute to the revitalization effort.

[kayman]

^^Hoover would fight tooth-n-nail before they allow that to happen. They think they are "the owners" of the Birmingham Barons these days. It is a shame the moron of an owner didn't keep the team in the city back in 1987, and built a new stadium in the city then that could be helped the team upgraded to be AAA league like the teams in Nashville, Memphis, and Charlotte did.

[Blazer85]

Don Logan (the owner) is certainly no moron and definitely is a pretty good corporate citizen for Metro Birmingham. Frankly, while I understand the desire to build a nice one downtown, I understand the decision to move them to Hoover. Hoover was at the center of the "white flight." Those are the folks with the expendible income that would take in all those baseball games. Particularly at the time when the move took place, downtown was not exactly the place to be. Financially and economically, it made sense to move to Hoover. Now from a civic prospective or a pro-Birmingham perspective, that may sound like heresy, but I dare say that had they moved into a park downtown at that time, the Barons would've struggled mightily to hang around.

Now downtown has come a long way since that time and there might be a day when that becomes an excellent opportunity to move them back downtown. Probably the best thing right now would be to help nurture the revitalization going on downtown, let the Barons continue for now at Hoover, and just wait. Birmingham needs to focus on bettering the overall image of DOWNTOWN. It's going to be a tough sell to make people think better of the overall CITY of Birmingham, but it definitely would be possible to sell folks on DOWNTOWN. Fix the mass transit issue, bring in more residents in the downtown core, bring in more restaurants, bars, etc. Eventually, maybe Birmingham could get a larger franchise where a larger baseball park might be required downtown... and Hoover could keep the AAA ball.