Jim Northrup spent part of his youth in the stands at Briggs Stadium watching Ted Williams and the visiting Red Sox play his beloved Tigers.

He later roamed the outfield of the renamed Tiger Stadium as a player. Even
so, he acknowledges -- despite nostalgic yearnings -- that the aging structure should be torn down.

"There is not much there to see now. It's not useful to anybody," the 67-year-old said. "All stadiums get torn down. There will be a lot of sentimentality, but how do you save it, and what for?"

The Detroit Tigers abandoned the 95-year-old ballpark at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull eight years ago. Ever since, city leaders have debated the fate of the previous home of Hall of Famers such as Ty Cobb, Hank Greenberg and Al Kaline -- and the site of several World Series and All-Star games.

The city of Detroit, which owns Tiger Stadium, agreed in July to hand authority of the stadium's future to the city's Economic Development Corp.

Some, though, still are fighting to make use of the historic venue.

A nonprofit group has until Monday to submit plans on saving part of the stadium. In the meantime, preparations to tear down at least some of the crumbling ballpark have started.

A demolition contract could be awarded this month with actual dismantling beginning as early as mid-November. Piece-by-piece, fans have bid on items from the stadium in a monthlong online auction. The city will use proceeds from the auction to defray the costs of demolition.

Detroit has spent $2.5 million in maintenance to Olympia Entertainment, owned by Tigers owner Mike Ilitch, on the stadium since Ilitch moved his Tigers across downtown in 2000 to Comerica Park. For many, it is a brooding symbol of blight that several cities with similarly obsolete ballparks have avoided.

Fabled Boston Garden closed to basketball and hockey in 1995 after nearly 70 years as a sports arena. It was torn down two years later. Proposals have surfaced for offices and condos on the site.

Chicago's old Comiskey Park was closed and replaced a year later with a massive parking lot. Baltimore's Memorial Stadium stood empty only three years before it was razed to make way for new homes.

"No good is served by having to put up with an empty, shuttered building," Maryland Stadium Authority spokeswoman Jill Hardesty said. "But you don't demolish until you have plans.

"You really have to know what's going in there. You want to have something that's vibrant there. You want something attractive."

Boston Garden had also deteriorated to the point where a new arena was necessary, said Albert Rex, director of a historic advisers group in Boston.

"Boston Garden couldn't have stood empty for eight years," Rex said. "How do you maintain it, protect its history and have it not be a blight on the neighborhood?"

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has said he wants a mix of retail shops and new homes at Michigan and Trumbull, the site for professional baseball in Detroit beginning in 1896. Navin Field, which later became Briggs Stadium and then finally Tiger Stadium, was built there in 1912.

"We don't know what percentage of the structure will be saved," Detroit Economic Development Corp. authorizing agent Art Papapanos said. "The question here will be how people will review what is retained and what the future development on the rest of the site will be."

Those decisions will be watched closely by Timothy McKay. The executive director of the Greater Corktown Development Corp. has been fighting for years to give people living near the stadium a voice in what replaces it.
Corktown is a 173-year-old neighborhood founded by Irish immigrants. Home to a mix of incomes, races and ethnicities, it sits in the shadow of Tiger Stadium.

The Corktown development group's vision for the site includes a sports museum -- which has been proposed by the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy and Hall of Fame broadcaster and Detroit icon Ernie Harwell -- along with a mix of retail shops and new homes.

"Baseball has left. The hulk itself isn't magical," McKay said. "It's the experience that creates the magic."

The nonprofit Conservancy wants to keep the playing field, dugouts, locker rooms and about 3,000 seats. The group hopes its plan is enough to save part of the ballpark.

"Maybe this will be a centerpiece for other developments around it that will revive the neighborhood and help Corktown too," Harwell told the Associated Press last week. "No matter what happens, it will be a memorial to the great place there at The Corner that meant so much to everybody for so long."
But if the plan is rejected or the Conservancy can't convince the Economic Development Corp. by next July 1 that it can get funding, Papapanos said the go-ahead for full demolition could be given to clear at least part of the land to make it attractive to potential developers.

McKay holds out hope that won't happen.

"We'd like to see the site honored ... not by some plaque buried beneath the floor of a shopping mall."