CANDLESTICK PARK
From the Re-Echo, June 2007

Many thanks to Mr. Bob Ryan and Mr. Keith Meland for providing additional, valuable information after this story was first published in the Re-Echo.  Please Contact Us if you have more information or clarifications.

Summer’s here and thoughts turn to baseball – and stadiums – and taxes to pay for them. But did you know that St. Louis Park was intended to be the site of a major league baseball stadium?

On December 14, 1948, the New York Giants baseball team announced that they were building a $1.5 million stadium called Candlestick Park on the corner of Highway 12/Wayzata Blvd. and Zarthan Ave. (southwest quadrant) with a 1,400 ft. frontage on Wayzata Blvd.. The site was mostly an abandoned gravel pit, although it appears that houses were removed on Zarthan and Yosemite, and that a section of Yosemite was vacated.

The Minneapolis Baseball and Athletic Association (MBAA) purchased 33 acres from Keith McCarthy for $33,000. The MBAA was owned by Horace Stoneham, owner of the Giants.

The stadium would initially be built for the Minneapolis Millers.  The Millers team dated back to as early as 1884, but joined the American Association as a AAA team in 1902.  They played at Nicollet Park until 1955 - it was demolished in 1956 and is now the site of a Norwest Bank branch.  In 1956 they played at Met Stadium until the Twins came to town in 1961.  The Millers were a local team, but throughout the years they were affiliated with major league teams, such as the Boston Red Sox (1936-38 and 1958-60) and the New York Giants (1946-57). 

It was during the time when the Millers were the Giants’ minor league team that a plan was formulated to lure the Giants themselves to a new 17,500-seat stadium. The Millers’ general manager, William H. “Rosey” Ryan, lived in St. Louis Park from 1946-48 (he later moved back to Minneapolis to be closer to Nicollet Park) and was apparently a big booster of the SLP site. 

But the stadium was never built: there wasn’t enough room for parking, the Korean War caused a steel shortage and a moratorium on sports facilities, and by the time the war ended, plans for Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington had already begun. The Met opened in 1956 on a 161-acre site.  The Giants moved the Millers to Phoenix, then Tacoma, back to Phoenix, and they folded in 1960.

The New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers - fierce rivals - both announced their moves to California in the summer of 1957.  The Giants moved to San Francisco and broke ground for their Candlestick Park in 1958. The stadium opened in 1960.  (This was the site of the Beatles’ last concert in 1966.)

Although one source says that the Giants chose the name Candlestick Park after a name-the-park contest on March 3, 1959, there is evidence that the name was chosen while Minnesota was still in the running – early plans for the Doubletree Hotel site made mention of Candlestick Drive. And to this day, Candlestick Pond is located at 16th Street and Park Place (possibly the 2.8 acre water hole, also mentioned in the Doubletree plans.) We would like to know more about Candlestick Pond (is it really full of VW bugs?), so please write to us.

After the deal went south, McCarthy’s sued the MBAA to get the land back, but Stoneman's estate held onto much of it for another 20 years, watching it quadruple in value. An exception was the Cooper Theater (1962-1992), which was built on part of this property.

Eventually the Stoneman estate went into bankruptcy, and hundreds of creditors wanted the property liquidated so they could recover part of the money that was owed them. The impasse over the ownership of the land was broken when  a St. Louis Park resident and also a shareholder in the Giants/MBAA, Eldon Rempfer decided to see if a restrictive covenant placed on the original sale by McCarthy could be removed.  The covenant would only allow alcoholic beverages to be sold in connection with major league baseball.  Eventually the covenant was removed, paving the way for the Ambassador Hotel and the Lincoln Del West to have liquor licenses. 

The property was sold in 1974, and today the parcel is the site of the Doubletree Hotel, Park Plaza East, Stahl Construction, and TGI Friday’s.

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This information comes from a variety of sources: newspapers, books, yearbooks, phone directories, interviews, etc. Given the varied sources, we cannot guarantee that all of this information is correct, and welcome any additions and corrections. Please contact us with your contributions and comments.