Bicentennial Park (Allentown)

The ballpark opened in 1939 as Fairview Field, home to the Allentown Dukes, a Boston Braves Minor League farm team. The Dukes, a founding member of the Interstate League, won both the regular-season pennant and defeated the Sunbury Senators in the playoffs.[4] The 1939 Dukes featured future Major League Baseball players Joe Antolick, George Hennessey and Tony Parisse.[5] The next year, the Dukes were replaced by the Allentown Fleetwings, which were affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals. In 1941, the team as taken over by the Philadelphia Phillies and renamed again, as the Allentown Wings; they reverted to the Cardinals in 1944 and played their final season at Fairview in 1947. (Allentown would play for the Interstate League title three times in four years, in 1944, 1945 and 1947, but lost each time.) The team moved to Breadon Field, a new ballpark just north of the city in Whitehall Township, on August 6, 1948 after playing on the road until then due to construction delays.[6][7]

Fairview Field was renovated in the mid-1970s and re-opened as Bicentennial Park in 1976 for use as a softball field. The renovation effort was led by Earl F. Hunsicker who raised an estimated $1,400,000 over an 11-year period, aided by Mayor Joseph S. Daddona and the Allentown Recreation Commission.[8]

In 2009, a controversy emerged over the land the stadium sits upon. LANTA (Lehigh And Northampton Transportation Authority), who at the time owned 0.2 acres of the property extending from the left field parking lot to the left field base line, announced plans to build a new garage using federal stimulus money and later expand the site and buy the remaining property the stadium sits on from the city of Allentown.[10] The plan, which would result in the demolition of the stadium, ran into opposition from the family of Earl Hunsicker as well as ECTB owner Terry Schadler, who tied up the proposal in the Allentown City Council. After a four-year lease renewal was awarded by City Council to new ECTB owner Dylan Dando in 2016, the matter was resolved in 2017.[11][12] The property in question was returned from LANTA to the City of Allentown in exchange for existing adjacent land which had been vacant and used for stadium parking, which LANTA intends to use for expansion of their existing facility near the stadium. The $13,000,000 expansion to the facility will add space vertically and allow for a compressed natural gas filling station on their property. This deal allows the stadium to remain open, although the Hunsicker family has expressed reservations based on the potential for disruption of parking at the site.

• History of baseball in Allentown, Pennsylvania
• Sports in Allentown, Pennsylvania
• Historical and Notable Sites in Allentown, Pennsylvania
• List of city parks and recreation facilities of Allentown, Pennsylvania