Last month, the College Baseball Foundation and Hall of Fame announced it would set up its first permanent home in Overland Park’s Museum at Prairiefire.
The new museum, expected to open in 2025, will move in alongside the existing Museum at Prairiefire on 135th Street.
It will showcase some of the greatest contributors to college baseball as well as a rotating collection of memorabilia the College Baseball Foundation has amassed over the years, Tom Jacobs, a board member, told the Post.
The surprise announcement last month capped off a year-long lobbying effort by Overland Park tourism officials and other local dignitaries, including a former Kansas City Royals star, to land the attraction over dozens of other cities.
VisitOP lobbied hard to be College Baseball Hall of Fame’s home
Overland Park was one of dozens of cities that submitted a proposal during the national search for the College Baseball Hall of Fame’s new home, according to officials with the College Baseball Foundation.
The whole process started in December 2022, when VisitOP — the nonprofit that serves as the city’s official visitor and tourism organization — sent a letter indicating Overland Park’s desire to submit a formal proposal.
Then, they had two weeks to pull together a formal bid.
“It was all hands on deck, a lot of work, a lot of long days to put together a response,” said Warren Wilkinson, president and CEO of VisitOP.
Then, after they found out the city made the initial cut, VisitOP, as well as the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce, city officials, former Royals left fielder Alex Gordon and Kansas Lt. Gov. David Toland prepared a virtual presentation for the foundation’s site selection committee.
Foundation members visited Overland Park twice last year
After that, the group invited members of the College Baseball Foundation for a two-day visit to Overland Park, which they accepted.
The visit happened in January 2023, Wilkinson said, and included visits to the city’s local sports fields, meetings with local leaders, drives around the community and stops at other Overland Park attractions like Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead and the Overland Park Arboretum & Botanical Gardens.
The group also visited the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.
Members of the foundation board came out for a subsequent visit last summer.
“I think they saw that we had pushed our chips to the center of the table and they realized that we were different and we are intentional and we care,” he said. “We became the clubhouse favorite.”
Foundation officials said Overland Park was one of three finalist cities, though they declined to say what the other two finalists cities were. Foundation officials also would not say exactly how many cities applied initially.
Location and venue played a role in the decision
Of the cities that applied, Overland Park was a quick favorite, ultimately getting “unanimous” approval from the College Baseball Foundation board, Jacobs said.
Several factors went into that.
With the Museum at Prairirefire, Overland Park already had a physical space available for the Hall of Fame, said Chair of the College Baseball Foundation Board Craig Ramsey, meaning the foundation could avoid the cost of building an entirely new venue.
Overland Park is in the heart of the country, as well, making it easy to access for college baseball fans from across the U.S.
Plus, Overland Park and the wider Johnson County area have a passion for local youth sports, Ramsey said, with a focus on baseball and softball.
Near Prairiefire, the Blue Valley Sports Complex is home to two dozen baseball and softball fields, and there’s also the Scheels Overland Park Soccer Complex on Switzer Road.
Finally, Overland Park also has the community resources — both in volunteers and charitable giving — the foundation expects to lean on to keep the Hall of Fame museum “sustainable,” Ramsey said.
What does the Hall of Fame mean for the Prairiefire museum?
The Museum at Prairiefire itself will remain largely unchanged, though the project received a $500,000 state grant to build a new entrance just for the College Baseball Hall of Fame.
As it stands, the plan is to have the Hall of Fame move into an existing space at the museum previously intended for traveling exhibits.
The museum’s Executive Director Terri Thompson said the museum was already planning on phasing out traveling exhibits because “it wasn’t sustainable” to expend resources attracting them.
The full-scale replica cast of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in the lobby — maybe the museum’s most recognizeable feature — will stay, as will the STEAM classrooms, the preschool, the restored wetlands and all the other defining features of the museum.
“This is just an additional exhibit to all of the natural history and science, technology and engineering and art exhibitions we already have,” Thompson said. “This is just going to allow us to engage more kids and to cultivate an even larger future STEM workforce.
Hall of Fame’s move comes at key time for Prairiefire
The Prairiefire development, anchored by the museum, was first established more than a decade ago with the backing of $65 million in state-issued STAR bonds, meant for projects with regional and national tourism appeal.
Recently, the development defaulted on the first round of repayment for the STAR bonds.
However, Wilkinson said he doesn’t think that means Prairiefire is struggling, particularly when you consider real estate challenges that have cropped up over the last decade or so and the impact of the pandemic on tourism.
“It’s 100% leased,” he said, calling the Prairiefire area a “success” and praising the “quality of the development.”
The College Baseball Foundation will move to Overland Park as well
In addition to locating the first home of the College Baseball Hall of Fame in the Museum at Prairiefire, the College Baseball Foundation, currently based in Lubbock, Texas, plans to move to the area as well.
Wilkinson said the foundation will move into some office space next door to the VisitOP office in the Prairiefire district, which is currently above the Brass Onion restaurant.
Ramsey said the foundation will be on the hunt for a new executive director to help oversee the local operations and other staff members as well, ideally from the Johnson County area.
The foundation is also planning to build a new board of directors for the College Baseball Hall of Fame museum, though what exactly that could look like is unclear.
But Ramsey said this means the College Baseball Foundation and the Hall of Fame are “all in” on becoming part of Overland Park.
What comes next?
- The museum is still projected to open some time next year.
- But, Ramsey and Jacobs say there’s still a lot of work to be done — the foundation has to hire a design group to help envision what the first phase of the College Baseball Hall of Fame museum might look like.
- Additionally, the foundation has to set a price tag for the project and identify the fundraising goal needed to make it happen.
- Ramsey also expects there to be multiple phases for the Hall of Fame in Overland Park, which will require additional planning and fundraising.
Keep reading: Prairiefire in Overland Park defaults on bond debt repayment
