A former pro baseball player from Alaska is building an indoor batting facility in Mountain View

A former minor league outfielder is leading a project to build a $1.5 million community center in Mountain View to give local kids the opportunity to practice baseball year-round.

Jamar Hill, a Bartlett High baseball standout who graduated in 2000 and was later drafted by the New York Mets, said the facility being built near Davis Park will allow kids to practice batting, pitching, fielding and other baseball and softball skills. Hill runs Nike RBI Alaska, which promotes youth baseball and softball.

The 4,000-square-foot building will have 20-foot-high ceilings, artificial turf, and protective netting to prevent damage from flying balls.

Construction workers on Friday were preparing the foundation that will soon support the building at 390 N. Pine St., just north of the Circle K gas station.

Neighborhood residents say the center will help improve a busy section of ethnically diverse Mountain View. The Municipality of Anchorage plans to demolish two abandoned houses on an adjacent property to support a future phase of the project, Hill said.

“Our intention is to expose kids to batting a ball, or pitching a ball, so they have a better chance of getting into an organized sport,” Hill said. “You learn the skills to do these sports when you’re a little kid. But most of our year is extreme cold, and there’s a cost to get indoors and try it out. So this will give kids a chance to get their toes in the water and practice year-round if they like it.”

The goal is to open the center by next summer, said Hill.

The construction materials were recently shipped to Alaska, he said. A design rendering depicts a large blue building with windows, but those windows are no longer part of the project after inflation pushed costs too high, he said.

Hill said Mountain View baseball players often can’t get across town to practice in The Dome, the largest indoor facility of its kind in Alaska.

The Mountain View Field House, as the facility is expected to be named, will provide those local players with an accessible option year-round, he said.

It’s also in a great location, he said. It’s being built across the street from the ball fields at Davis Park. In summer, players can come inside from the rain when games are canceled, he said.

The center intends to provide subsidized after-school programs for neighborhood players, he said. But it plans to charge a fee at other times to help cover expenses.

Yeralvin Ramirez, a freshman baseball player for Bettye Davis East High School who’s originally from the Dominican Republic, said he lives near the center and plans to get lots of practice in once it opens.

He and other kids train year-round with Hill, and everyone is really excited about it, he said.

“You don’t see facilities like this that you can go in after school and take swings to get better,” he said. “The other ones are really far.”

Phil Cannon, president of the Mountain View Community Council and a pastor at a neighborhood church, said people have been trying to improve the area around the park for a long time.

The new center will be a big step in that direction, he said.

“I love that it’s going in, in Mountain View,” he said. “Our whole neighborhood needs investment and this is one way our kids will have more opportunity to develop and grow, not just as baseball players but as youth.”

Dave Barney, head of the area’s Polar Little League, said that the center can help make baseball more like basketball, which is extremely popular in Alaska because it’s “weatherproof” and played indoors.

It will also be a big improvement over baseball practice that’s held in gymnasiums, said Barney, who also manages the Mountain View Community Center Boys & Girls Club.

“In the middle of winter, we have one curtain dividing our gym, so we can do a little bit,” he said. “But then you worry about the balls hitting windows or lights or other kids. So it’s better to have a specific location when it comes to swinging bats and pitching balls.”

Hill said funding for the project has come from various sources, including the city, a youth foundation associated with Major League Baseball, the Rasmuson Foundation and other groups.

Hill said he’s not sure when the second phase of the project will be built on the neighboring lot. Additional funding will be needed for that, he said.

The idea at the moment is to build an adjoining building on that lot as a study hall, he said. GCI has donated high-speed internet to the project and that could help students with their schoolwork, he said.

The boarded-up houses on the adjacent lot, including an old log-cabin-kit home, will be torn down by the city to support the project, Hill said.

That’s a relief because he’d worried about having a youth facility next to a property that attracted squatters and has a history of code violations, he said.

The municipality worked with the lending institution that had foreclosed on those abandoned houses, said Scott Campbell, chief inspector for Development Services. The agency has launched a program to raze some of the city’s abandoned houses.

The lending institution agreed to donate the properties to the baseball group after the city waived fines associated with the nuisance property, Campbell said.

“This will help make that whole block next to the gas station better than it used to be,” he said.