FORT WORTH, Texas — Lagrave Field, a historic baseball stadium located on Fort Worth's future Panther Island, will be torn down in the coming weeks.
The field, which has hosted the likes of Jackie Robinson and Joe DiMaggio, used to be home to a minor league baseball team, the Fort Worth Cats. Today, it sits north of downtown abandoned, unused and in the way of development coinciding with the billion-dollar flood control project colloquially known as Panther Island.
The Tarrant Regional Water District Board of Directors approved a contract with Lloyd D. Nabors Demolition on Tuesday. The company will tear down the stadium but preserve Cats memorabilia to be auctioned off at a later time, according to Darrell Beason, chief operations officer with the Water District.
Several advocates, including Jim Lane, a now-deceased longtime Water District board member, fought to preserve the stadium after the Water District took ownership of it in 2019. The Fort Worth Cats parted ways with the stadium in 2014 and the field has been vacant ever since.
However, the board voted in June to demolish the stadium after a consultant tasked with recommending economic development strategies tied to the Central City Flood Control Project recommended it be torn down.
The land the park sits on will soon become prime real estate as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers works to turn 500 acres between downtown Fort Worth and Northside into waterfront property.
More details on the date of the demolition and auction will be available soon, Chad Lorrance, a spokesman for the Water District said.
The demolition will cost no more than $328,000. The concrete waste will be repurposed and used on an erosion control project on Handley-Edderville Road, Beason said.
