State budget includes $1.5 million for Jimmy John’s Field improvements

UTICA — The state’s fiscal year 2025 budget that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law in late July included $1.5 million to support improvements at Jimmy John’s Field, according to an announcement from state Sen. Michael Webber, R-Rochester Hills.

Jimmy John’s Field opened in 2016. It was built on a capped brownfield landfill site owned by Utica’s Downtown Development Authority that had served as an unlicensed dump for household waste for 80 years. Jimmy John’s field today serves as the home for the four teams that play in the United Shore Professional Baseball League and the Lawrence Technological University Blue Devils baseball team.

Andrew Appleby, the chairman of General Sports & Entertainment and owner, founder and CEO of the United Shore Professional Baseball League at Jimmy Johns’ Field, said that Jimmy John’s Field won awards for the very best brownfield project in all of America in 2017 at the National Brownfields Conference. It won the 2017 Phoenix Award for Community Impact and the 2017 People’s Choice Award.

“And after almost 10 years now, the ballpark needs a lot of infrastructure work from all of the earth settling that has occurred, including: major concrete repairs, extensive masonry work throughout the ballpark, the playing field itself needs to be redone, as it has shifted substantially — and/or potentially returfed altogether with synthetic turf. And with all of the settling comes the need also to repaint several areas of the ballpark as well,” Appleby said.

He anticipates that the upgrades will be made over the next year.

Webber in a press release called Jimmy John’s Field “a community success story.” He highlighted how it took a blighted site and turned it into something economically beneficial.

“Investments into these types of facilities are investments into the prosperity of local communities throughout our state. It is only fair to include Jimmy John’s Field considering similar investments in the home fields of the minor league Lansing Lugnuts and West Michigan Whitecaps were made in the previous budget,” he said.

Webber said the Jimmy John’s Field improvements money was one of several projects that he worked to have included in the budget.

“Throughout the budget process, I was proud to work alongside local leaders in order to advocate on their behalf and help secure funding for important projects all across the 9th Senate District,” Webber said.