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Tobacco rides bench at Hammons Field games
Springfield News Leader
3/9/2004
New baseball stadium will be smoke-free, official says.
Handicap seating is being installed around the entire stadium just above the first level of seats.
Health officials have requested that Hammons Field be a smoke-free facility. It has been decided that no smoking will be allowed in the stadium.
Dean Curtis News-Leader
By Mike Penprase and Jeff Arnold News-Leader
News-Leader
John Q. Hammons has decided his $32 million Springfield baseball stadium will be smoke-free when it opens on April 2.
Although Hammons was in Oklahoma City on Monday and not available for comment, Hammons Field coordinator Bill Fischer told the News-Leader that Hammons and director of operations Lou Weckstein discussed the issue during a business meeting.
He confirmed the tobacco-free policy.
Although people will be allowed to smoke in the plaza area in front of the stadium entrance at Hammons Parkway and East Trafficway, tobacco use won't be allowed when fans enter the 8,056-seat stadium, he said.
"Once anybody goes inside the gates, it's smoke-free, tobacco-free," Fischer said. "It's a health situation, in this day and time."
That pleases Delores Joyce of Breathe Easy Springfield.
In January, Breathe Easy asked member organizations to contact Hammons to encourage him to make Hammons Field tobacco-free.
Joyce said Monday that she doesn't know whether the campaign played a role, but she is pleased.
"However it came about, it's a very good thing," she said.
The Springfield-Greene County Environmental Advisory Board is the latest group to adopt Breathe Easy's stance. It voted unanimously Saturday to write Hammons and Weckstein to ask that the stadium complex be declared tobacco-free. Although the board isn't a Breathe Easy member, it is involved in environmental and health issues. Board members said before Saturday's vote that while Hammons Field is a private venture, Hammons should be encouraged to adopt a tobacco-free policy.
"Even though this is a private center, we think it's important that (Hammons) knows how the community feels about this," board chairwoman Ann Hall said Sunday.
"This isn't a new thing."
The Breathe Free strategy had two points, Joyce said.
"We framed our letter from strictly a standpoint of a smoke-free facility, to provide a positive role model for us, and secondly as a maintenance issue," she said.
Banning tobacco from the stadium would follow minor league policy, Joyce said.
"The minor-league policy states, as I read it and understand it, the players, the managers — anyone associated with the team — cannot possess tobacco products," she said. "We're encouraging them to extend that to the stadium. Instead of providing a smoking area, just make the whole stadium smoke-free."
The local chapter of the American Lung Association is among several health- and medical-related groups to have written Hammons.
"Here's a great opportunity; Mr. Hammons does some wonderful things for Springfield, and this is an opportunity for him to provide a smoke-free field," said Jo Thompson, executive director of the local American Lung Association chapter. There are precedents for taking that stance, from the Springfield-Greene County Park Board's decision to make its facilities smoke-free several years ago to the more recent decision by Ozarks Technical Community College to make that move, she said.
The lung association also is appealing to Hammons' desire to have a well-maintained stadium. "He's got such a beautiful stadium there," Thompson said. "Why mess it up with ashes and butts and burns?"
Baseball fans will get ample notice of the stadium policy, Fischer said. "We will have proper signage to clarify that for all fans coming into the stadium," he said.
"In all respects, we are smoke-free within the gates of the Hammons Field complex." |
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