Atlantic Cape Community College embarks on $1,480,000 'Field of Dreams' after a decade at Surf Stadium

After playing home games for a decade at Surf Stadium, the Atlantic Cape Community College community will have its own baseball field at its May Landing campus for the 2025 season. Last Thursday's report from DownBeach said that the college has embarked on a $1.48 million baseball field project and hopes to host baseball games for the 2025 season.

The Atlantic Cape Foundation started the “Bring it Home” fundraising campaign in 2020 to realize their ambitious project. With the help of donors, the campaign has been able to raise a whopping $186,000.

The construction of 'Field of Dreams' started in early February and if all goes well, next year, Atlantic Cape College will play their home games on the land behind the Rutgers Lifelong Learning Center.

The ambitious project came to fruition after several years of planning, fundraising campaigns, environmental approvals, the design of the ballpark and community permission.

Moreover, county commissioners, the college’s Board of Trustees, staff, faculty and alumni, as well as players and coaches from the present baseball team, are also to be thanked for the project.

Jean McAlister, Atlantic Cape chief of staff and Foundation executive director, thanked the donors and sponsors for their support.

“We received tremendous support from many donors and sponsors, including Steven Nehmad, Dixon Engineering, SOSH Architects, Spiezle Architects and Laura Bishop Communications, that helped to get our campaign going,” said McAlister. “Without these folks behind the scenes we would not be here today.”

President Barbara Gaba also acknowledged the efforts put into this project and thanked all the stakeholders involved.

“This $1.48 million project, which was funded through the State of New Jersey and Atlantic County Chapter 12 funds, has been made possible by the support of our commissioners and Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson,” Gaba said.

“Thank you so much for your on-going support of the college. With this groundbreaking, Atlantic Cape can begin to demonstrate our commitment to our athletics by providing the necessary facilities for student athletes to excel. We are grateful to all of those who have helped us make this vision a reality.”

Why did Atlantic Cape Community College undertake this project to build a baseball field?

Atlantic Cape Community College is the only community college in the state of New Jersey without a baseball field on campus. It put the college at a distinct disadvantage as local student-athletes committed to other colleges and universities to further their studies and baseball careers.

College officials and project stakeholders are now confident that building a state-of-the-art National Collegiate Athletic Association regulation ballpark will attract baseball-playing students to Atlantic Cape College.