Baseball Team Going to West Chester

The Mercury is reporting today that the long rumored baseball team that is coming to Chester County will end up in West Chester, not Phoenixville.

WEST CHESTER — First proposed years ago, championed by an impressive group of local civic leaders and bolstered by a feasibility study, a minor league baseball stadium to be built in West Chester is apparently inching ever closer to becoming a reality.

The Turk's Head Stadium Alliance (THSA) is meeting today at 10 a.m. to announce that a verbal agreement has been reached for a site, and that a Class A affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies will be the main tenant.

"The Phillies will bring a team here if we can build a stadium," confirmed Jerry Schneider, who is one of a dozen or so members of the THSA.

It is still in the early stages of a very complex issue involving many entities, and no contracts have been signed. But according to Schneider, the Phillies are hoping to have a team begin the 2013 baseball season in a new 4,000-5,000 seat venue located on the former Wyeth Labratories site at South Bolmar and East Nields streets. The 30 acre plot is currently owned by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.

The Phoenixville Steel Site was one of three finalists for the stadium, the other being the former Cedar Hollow quarry in East Whiteland. An anonymous source indicates that the Phillies' Williamsport Crosscutters affiliate will be the team coming to West Chester.

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