Fireflies fans will have sufficient parking for home opener, team owner says

Expecting a sell-out crowd for the April 14 home game opener of the Columbia Fireflies, the team owner said Thursday spectators will readily be able to get into the stadium and have places to park.

Most people who attend the Thursday night game will be directed by attendants to makeshift grass or gravel parking areas within walking distance of the $37 million, city-owned ballpark, said Jason Freier, owner of the company, Hardball Capital, that owns the team and runs the stadium.

Details about the parking areas will be made public by the end of March through a map published on the team’s website and through the media, Freier said. The map also will show various access roads that will get drivers to the parking areas.

VIP ticket holders will have their own parking area. Everyone else will be directed to parking on a first-come, first-served basis, he said.

“We have a pretty good idea of where we’re going to park people,” Freier said. “People (who park and walk to the stadium) should not have to go very far.”

Freier declined to be specific about where the parking area will be because he said last-minute changes on the Bull Street site could cause shifts in the designated parking areas. Public parking spaces have yet to be built for the stadium or for the larger BullStreet neighborhood that is just beginning to emerge around the ballpark.

Columbia police will assist with directing traffic in the immediate area around the stadium, Freier said. Hardball Capital is paying for parking attendants who will help motorists inside the development and at the stadium.

“I have no doubt we will sell out opening night,” Freier said of Spirit Communications Park that is nearing completion.

The stadium’s capacity for baseball games is about 8,200. He has not decided whether to limit the number of tickets sold to fewer than capacity.

Freier said he wants fans initial visit to the ballpark to be a good experience and selling every available ticket might result in crowds too large to manage well at first.

“In Fort Wayne, we turned away hundreds of people,” he said of opening night at the Indiana ballpark where another of Freier’s teams plays.

There always are unforeseen difficulties. “When we open a ballpark, something will go wrong,” he said of his reservations about maximizing ticket sales for the opening game.

This story was originally published February 25, 2016 at 4:04 PM.