College baseball hall — for all

FITS LIKE A GLOVE: A fully immersive experience, shown here in a rendering, is the vision behind the College Baseball Hall of Fame, a 7,000-square-foot attraction proposed for Overland Park, Kansas. (Courtesy Populous)

$12M project hopes to boost Prairiefire development

The proposed College Baseball Hall of Fame wouldn’t be your typical stately display of artifacts paying homage to the greats of the college game, said Brian Mirakian, senior principal with Populous, the firm designing the facility.

The $12 million project in Overland Park Kansas, mostly privately financed by the College Baseball Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is to preserve and promote the college sport, is designed to showcase new technology as much as honoring players inducted into the College Baseball Hall of Fame, which to this point does not have a permanent location to recognize inductees.

The foundation itself is currently headquartered in Lubbock, Texas in 2004, where the group tried unsuccessfully to build a hall of fame in that city. In 2017, Wichita, Kansas officials made a pitch to build the hall in that community, but the project never materialized.

Fast forward to 2024 in Kansas City. Populous won the job through a proposal process, and after considering multiple sites across the country, the foundation selected Overland Park and hopes to open the attraction sometime in 2026, Mirakian said.

“It’s going to be highly immersive,” he said. “The idea is the foundation wants to capitalize on bringing a wide ranging audience to the museum, from youth baseball players in town for a summer tournament to visitors from the region. There are so many ways we can capture the digital experience, using (3D computer graphics software) Unreal Engine. We can create a believable experience of being in a batter’s box at one of these college venues.”

On paper, the hall of fame itself has been in existence since 2006. This year’s 11 inductees include former big leaguers Roger Clemens, Mike Schmidt and Mark Teixeira.

The 7,000-square-foot, single-level site for the hall of fame in suburban Kansas City is part of an existing building that was previously a natural history museum. There is space to expand the hall of fame over time, Mirakian said.

Overall, it’s part of Prairiefire, a $350 million mixed-use development in Overland Park that has grown over the past 10 years to include retail, restaurants, office space, movie theater and a boutique hotel.

Along the way, Prairiefire has gone through some financial struggles. It defaulted on $15 million in state bond debt after not generating enough sales to pay its obligations under a tax incentive program, the Kansas City Star reported in January.

Over the past nine months, some businesses have closed and others, such as the Amazon Fresh grocery store, backed out of the development.

In July, Fred Merrill, owner of Merrill Companies, the ownership group behind Prairiefire, told the Star that the overall development was about 97% occupied.

For the College Baseball Hall of Fame, the foundation is actively fund-raising to meet the project cost, with the state of Kansas pitching in some public money, Mirakian said.

In addition, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has reportedly contributed $500,000 to the project.

Some industry observers in Kansas City feel downtown KC would be a better site for the College Baseball Hall of Fame, in particular, the historic 18th & Vine Jazz District, where the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum sits.

Another site they mentioned is the Legends Outlets in Kansas City, Kansas, which encompasses a minor league ballpark, a Major League Soccer stadium and a motorsports track.

Mirakian, though, believes Prairiefire is the right location for the project. There’s a large Scheels sporting goods store nearby, he said, as well as youth baseball fields, to help bring traffic to the hall of fame. Plus, the Kansas City market has a rich baseball tradition between MLB’s Royals and the history behind the old Negro Leagues’ Kansas City Monarchs, he said.

At this point, Major League Baseball and the Royals are not investors in the college baseball project, but the hall of fame has an agreement with MLB to have its website linked on mlb.com, Mirakian confirmed.

On their own, the Royals help sponsor the annual College Baseball Night of Champions events, in which the College Baseball Hall of Fame honors inductees in Kansas City during the offseason.

As Mirakian referenced, college baseball’s “cathedrals” will be incorporated into the hall’s programming, such as Dudy Noble Field at Polk-Dement Stadium, home of Mississippi State baseball, among the college game’s strongest programs.

In addition, the College World Series will be integrated into the facility, a tradition celebrated every June during the NCAA tournament in Omaha, Nebraska. The highly-revered event typically sells out 24,000-seat Charles Schwab Field, and before that, old Rosenblatt Stadium, which was torn down in 2012.

“At this stage, it’s all conceptual,” Mirakian said. “We haven’t locked in on certain ballparks over others, but we want to provide an aspirational experience. When a young person walks through those doors with their mom and dad, it’s about their vision to be a baseball great, and what was that path that took them to that moment, stepping in the box as a collegian.”

For Populous, the hall of fame fits with its DNA, according to Mirakian. Over the past 40 years, the firm has designed more than 20 MLB stadiums, dating to Camden Yards in Baltimore. The company has designed 60 collegiate ballparks.

“We have a deep love for baseball and it’s in our backyard,” he said. “We rarely get a chance to work on these projects in our hometown. College baseball continues to grow, and with ESPN Plus streaming games, it allows for more access to content. There are so many traditions and great players. It’s something to be celebrated and the foundation believes it.”