This small add-on to Thursday's column on the sports facilities bonanza in Minnesota was lost in the shuffle.
THE THREE most-astounding developments in Twin Cities sports facilities in recent years (in my opinion):
* Most of us thought Glen Mason was hallucinating when he started talking about an on-campus football stadium for the Gophers in the early 2000s. It happened in 2009. Sadly for Mason, the visionary, he had been fired three seasons earlier.
* Mike Veeck came off as loonier than Mason when he started talking up his plan for a ballpark/art gallery in St. Paul's Lowertown for a tired independent league baseball team. He got it with CHS Field in 2015, and the Saints are tired no longer.
*The $52 million Anderson Athletic and Recreation Complex, all 180,000-square feet of it, opened at the University of St. Thomas in 2010. I could not believe my lyin' eyes, that this was a home for Division III athletics.
There were also a couple of notes on under-the-radar aspects of Minnesota's sports facilities craze.
From Tom Redman, director of parks and recreation in Chaska: "We are planning on opening our $20 million curling, event center and restaurant (Crooked Pint) the first week of December in Firemen's Park in downtown Chaska. The six-sheet curling component being built by the city of Chaska is like nothing else in the Midwest."
From Bill Nelson, the amateur baseball man long associated with Dundas: "It is not only the pros at which money is tossed. Amateur baseball has been spending mind-boggling dollars, too. Every town that has the State Tournament over the last few years has spent at least $100,000 to improve their ballpark. This year, Cold Spring made big improvements with the help of a substantial donation from Eric Decker. And Watkins added to its park in a big way, as you saw.
