Saving Hinchliffe Stadium Brian LoPinto fights to preserve the Paterson landmark Story by Jordan Schwartz One of Brian LoPinto’s earliest memories was climbing the back fence at Hinchliffe Stadium to sneak a peak of an Eastside football game. Born and raised in the shadow of the Paterson landmark, the 30-yearold has a special place in his heart for the massive concrete oval near the Great Falls. Even after he moved to Clifton in 1992, LoPinto continued to be drawn to Hinchliffe. His first hit as a varsity baseball player came when the Mustangs played Kennedy at the stadium during his junior year. LoPinto still has the ball. So it should come as no surprise to learn that in 2002, he co-founded the Friends of Hinchliffe Stadium, a volunteer non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and revitalizing the structure (hinchliffestadium.org). “I’d like to see it restored and refurbished and brought back to its glory,” said LoPinto. Completed in 1932, the 10,000seat facility hosted various sporting events, from football and boxing to car racing and track and field. But the last significant draw was a Duke Ellington concert in 1972. A lack of up-keep led to the stadium’s closure in 1997—two years after LoPinto singled down the third base line. Since then, Hinchliffe has deteriorated even more with graffiti on the walls and a large portion of the track surface rotting away. In 2004, the ’96 CHS grad, along with fellow Steering Committee members Flavia Alaya and
Cliftonite Brian LoPinto stands in the bleachers of the dilapidated Hinchliffe Stadium, a Paterson landmark he is working to preserve.
Christopher Coke, got Hinchliffe placed on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. But the stadium’s fate lies in the fighting hands of the Paterson Board of Education, which owns the property, and the City Council. On March 10, the Council approved Mayor Joey Torres’ plan to put a question on the November ballot asking voters whether or not they would approve of the city spending $15 million in a state-backed, 30year bond to renovate Hinchliffe. Residents approved a similar $10 million proposal in 2005, but the plan was stymied because the BOE rejected Torres’ redevelopment plan. The district wants classroom space or possibly a sports business academy to be included in the plan, but Torres wants Hinchliffe to be used only for athletics and recreation.
Caught in the middle are people such as LoPinto who would just like some sort of resolution. The Cliftonite has produced two short films about the stadium. “Field of Tears” (2002) is a musiconly video set to black and white images of Hinchliffe with Frank Sinatra’s “There Used to be a Ballpark” playing in the background. He also made a one-minute documentary in 2006 with interviews about the importance of the stadium on both a local and national level. One of LoPinto’s colleagues from Friends of Hinchliffe showed both of the films during a recent speech at the Brownstone in Paterson that Passaic County Economic Development Director Deborah Hoffman happened to attend. April 2009 • Clifton Merchant
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