Lindquist Field is entering its 20th season of Ogden Raptors baseball. This story is part of a series highlighting the people and events that make the ballpark’s history.

OGDEN — Rusted, vacant buildings and polluted lots stood watch over Ogden’s lower downtown district in the early 1990s, sentinels of the dead industrial era they represented.

Nearby, the Ogden City Mall was entering its own death spiral and locals fretted about the future of Junction City’s whole downtown.

Then, a determined group of people hit one out of the park.

Baseball returned to Ogden.

LINDQUIST FIELD 20TH SEASON

Read more in our 7-part series on the people, events and history of Ogden’s ballpark

The construction of Lindquist Field on the old Ogden Iron Works site marked the beginning of downtown Ogden’s rebirth, say several who were in the thick of the effort to build the stadium, home of the Pioneer League’s Ogden Raptors. Entering its 20th season of baseball, Lindquist Field is a lively beacon for the city’s increasingly vibrant downtown.

“Back in that day, downtown was dark and dirty and dangerous, and we needed to do something that would attract families to that area,” said Dan Musgrave, longtime executive director of Downtown Ogden Inc.

“It had to be on both weekday and weekend nights, somewhere people felt safe with a great activity, and people would come back downtown,” Musgrave said.

City leaders were frustrated with the community’s economic decline in the early 1990s.

“Downtown was largely vacant,” Musgrave said. “The businesses were fleeing to Riverdale. Graffiti was on everything and after 5 o’clock, no one felt comfortable downtown.”

City and business leaders worked to clean up the area, fix building facades and install landscaping, plus add a few events like car shows. But they were baby steps.

“Baseball was a capstone because it could run the entire summer,” Musgrave said. “It was exactly what we needed.”

But Raptors club president Dave Baggott’s pitch to anchor his new franchise in downtown Ogden did not deliver an immediate panacea. Political infighting and a legacy of industrial pollution around the ballpark site threatened to delay or even derail the plan, recall some of those who were involved.

Baggott and Raptors co-owner John E. Lindquist, the eventual name donor of the city-owned stadium, credited then-Ogden Mayor Glenn Mecham for being receptive to their plan and working to make it a reality.

At least $200,000 in federal “Superfund”-related funds from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were allocated to pay for cleanups of lots in the area of the eventual stadium site. Where Lindquist Field now sits, the shuttered Ogden Iron Works, a maker of industrial equipment such as small rail mining cars, dominated the neighborhood.

When the Iron Works and other legacy industries died out, they left lead, petroleum and other soil pollution. These EPA-designated “brownfield sites” could be a costly headache to redevelop, which caused Ogden’s stadium site selection committee to also consider “greenfield” locations outside the city core.

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Supplied/By D&RGW 223 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

But the allure of building the stadium downtown held sway. “It was obvious that field needed to be downtown,” Musgrave said.

Ogden had a proud baseball history, including runs by the Ogden Reds and Ogden Dodgers, and even one year of the Ogden A’s, a Triple-A affiliate. But Affleck Park on south Wall Avenue was torn down to make way for commercial developments in the 1980s, leaving Ogden without a minor league team for years.

In the mid-1990s, the Raptors started play at Serge Simmons Field near the Weber River in West Ogden, with a city promise to have the downtown stadium built after two years, recalled Lindquist.

“Then the city council backpedaled on us,” Lindquist said, noting a faction on the council “didn’t like the mayor — they just didn’t like Glenn.” He said the conflict complicated fundraising, even though critics on the council ended up voting for the stadium.

Lindquist, who led the fundraising committee appointed by Mecham, said two philanthropic families early on had offered to look into putting up money sufficient for the naming rights. However, one never put together the needed sum and the other “was afraid of the city council and having their name attached” to a project that might fall through due to the political conflict, he said.

To seal the $5 million project, Lindquist eventually put up $1.2 million for the naming rights. The state contributed $1 million, the city $1.5 million and smaller donors the rest.

Baggott said Mecham once said he “used all his political capital” to get the stadium built. 

Lindquist, who today still runs the stadium scoreboard — “one reason why it’s usually wrong,” he joked — is proud of the Raptors club and the impact the field has had. Lindquist Field is on many “most beautiful ballpark” lists and the Raptors have led the Pioneer League in attendance every season since the park opened.

“Ogden has always been a baseball town,” he said, and now pulls fans from the greater Weber County, north Davis County and Box Elder County regions.

The park is now entering its 20th year, complete with an iron work design at its entrance in a nod to the old industrial site. It opened June 24, 1997, and after expansions, seats 8,262.

Many believe “the construction of Lindquist Field was the beginning of the renaissance of downtown Ogden,” Baggott said.

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BENJAMIN ZACK/Standard-Examiner

“I think having the ballpark and having people come downtown was the catalyst to get things moving,” he added. “Even 25th Street wasn’t then what it is today. I’ve seen downtown Ogden change like you can’t believe, and the change has been 100 percent for the better. We’d like to think the construction of Lindquist Field has a piece in that success.”

Since then, 25th Street has boomed and The Junction development replaced the mall.

Baggott said Lindquist Field has been life-changing for him.

“Lindquist Field means more than the name Lindquist, it means more than baseball,” he said. “Lindquist Field means community. Anything that can attract people from the community to come be together is always a positive.

“It’s my life, it’s my friend, it’s my city. It’s my livelihood,” Baggott said.

Mark Johnson, Ogden City chief administrative officer, said the dream of Baggott, Lindquist and Mecham provides a major selling point for the community.

“It’s been a wonderful addition,” he said. “It’s helped clean up an area that was blighted at one time. When we bring people in, they say it’s the most gorgeous setting for a ballpark they’ve ever seen.”

Reporter Brett Hein contributed to this story.

You can reach reporter Mark Shenefelt at mshenefelt@standard.net or 801 625-4224. Follow him on Twitter at @mshenefelt and like him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SEmarkshenefelt.