Construction starts for Huntington Park

Speaking of the Arena District, ground was broken this morning for the Clippers’ new home, Huntington Park.

Just after 11 a.m., about 10,000 people watched as officials stuck ceremonial shovels into the ground and dug out the first holes for the Columbus Clippers new Huntington Field, NBC 4’s Barb Flannigan reported.

Here’s Ballpark Digest on the financing:

Ballpark construction will be financed by Franklin County, which will sell economic development bonds. These bonds will be repaid in part from the capital contributed by the project’s major corporate sponsors. Huntington Bank purchased the naming rights for the new downtown Columbus ballpark in 2006. The $12 M contract with Huntington is the second-largest donation for a minor-league ballpark in the history of baseball. Stadium Inc. will lease the ballpark from the county and will assume debt service and operational duties. Future ballpark revenues and the sale proceeds from the team’s current home, Cooper Stadium, will also be used to offset the cost to construct Huntington Park. The major sponsorships include: $9.3 million from The City of Columbus (infrastructure investment), $6 million from the Columbus Dispatch (scoreboard naming rights) and $6M from Nationwide Insurance & Nationwide Realty (concourse naming rights).

Here’s a bit more from Business First:

Amid speeches, photo opportunities and ballpark food at a ground-breaking ceremony Thursday, Columbus Clippers supporters received an update on how construction of Huntington Park will play out over the next 20 months.

The result, said Nationwide Realty Investors President Brian Ellis, is the 10,000-seat baseball park will be ready for the Clippers’ Triple A season opener in April 2009.

Nationwide Realty is overseeing design and construction work for the $56 million project as the owners representative for the Franklin County commissioners. The county will own the ballpark as it does Cooper Stadium, the Clippers’ current home, and the International League baseball club.