Camden's troubled baseball stadium, once hailed a new beginning for the city's waterfront, will be torn down and replaced with three Rutgers University athletic fields under a deal approved by the university's board Thursday.

Rutgers' board of governors voted unanimously to move forward with a deal to team with the City of Camden and the Camden County Improvement Authority to demolish Campbell's Field, the 16-year-old stadium across from the Philadelphia skyline.

The stadium will be replaced by a multi-purpose athletics facility with fields, modest bleachers and locker rooms for Rutgers-Camden's NCAA Division III baseball team, as well as softball, soccer, lacrosse and field hockey teams, university officials said. The fields, which would be owned by the city, would also be used by Camden students and residents.

"These playing fields are important to Rutgers students as well as to the health of Camden's families," said Phoebe Haddon, Rutgers-Camden's chancellor.

Rutgers pledged $7.5 million for the project, which is estimated to cost about $15 million, school officials said. The City of Camden is expected to apply for Green Acres state funding to pay for the other half of the project.

Rutgers-Camden spokesman Mike Sepanic said he is unsure what will happen to the existing stadium's debt.

No timetable was given for razing the old stadium or building the new athletic facility.

Camden Mayor Dana Redd said the city is disappointed to see Campbell's Field torn down, but the partnership with Rutgers is the best outcome for the city.

"I can not think of a better scenario," Redd said in a statement.

City and county officials have been debating for months what to do with the stadium and the valuable land around it. The Camden Riversharks, a now-defunct minor league baseball team, moved out two years ago.

Rutgers-Camden's baseball team has been the only team regularly using the facility.

Many view the current stadium, which was built partially with public money, as a massive failure and waste of public money.

South Jersey political powerbroker George Norcross said in October that pouring money into a minor league baseball stadium proved to be unwise.

"Unfortunately, the state, in its lack of wisdom, built a baseball stadium for an unaffiliated, independent league (team) that folded and $35 million disappeared," Norcross said at a Chamber of Commerce event, the Courier-Post reported.

Campbell's Field was built with great promise.

Then-Gov. Christie Whitman helped break ground on the project in 1999, comparing the stadium to the movie "Field of Dreams".

"Well, soon we will see a field of dreams right here in Camden, and my prediction is 'they will come,'" Whitman said.

The stadium was built with a complex combination of at least $21 million in bonds, loans, grants and other financing from the state Economic Development Authority, the Delaware River Port Authority, Rutgers and Santander Bank, then known as Sovereign Bank.

The Campbell Soup Company, based in Camden, paid $3 million to have its name on the stadium and the facility began to attract crowds for baseball games, concerts and other events in the shadow of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

But the stadium quickly ran into serious financial problems.

The project eventually defaulted on its bond payments and the case ended up in court. Camden County purchased the property in 2015 to save it from foreclosure.

With the minor league baseball team gone, Campbell's Field currently brings in only about $100,000 in revenue a year, including $82,000 Rutgers pays to use the stadium for its baseball games, a spokesman said last month.

Rutgers-Camden plans to add new men's lacrosse and women's field hockey teams to use the new fields, said Sepanic, the school's spokesman.

The new athletics facility would take over the entire footprint of the waterfront park, leaving no room for other projects that had been suggested for the space, Sepanic said.

Camden County submitted a proposal earlier this year that would demolish the stadium to make way for a new Amazon HQ2 headquarters as part of a national competition to lure the tech company to the East Coast. But, Amazon has not expressed any public interest in taking Camden up on the offer.

Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find her at KellyHeyboerReporter on Facebook.