Bay News 9 - July 28th, 2007

A home run for Lakewood Ranch

LAKEWOOD RANCH (Bay News 9) -- From hockey to baseball.

That's the transition for the Lakewood Ranch community after its high hopes for a hockey arena plunged. The abandoned project now sits frozen in time.

But the C & H Baseball company is filling that void with a new baseball training facility that recently passed the planning stages.

C & H Baseball makes equipment and supplies for Major League Baseball teams and their facilities. The company has worked with the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros and done work on Petco Park in San Diego and PNC Park in Pittsburgh.

The indoor facility in Lakewood Ranch is slated to be a state of the art building that will have room for teams to practice fielding and batting on full size fields while also containing batting cages and pitching machines.

"There's a definite need for something like this,'' said C & H co-owner Rob Huff, who said construction could start this September. "We have access to some awesome people.''