Add another $16 million to the money pit formerly known as Campbell's Field on the Camden Waterfront that will soon be demolished.

The Camden County Improvement Authority approved a nearly $1 million contract this month to tear down the 17-year-old former "Field of Dreams." It was built with $21 million in public dollars thrown after a fad of independent minor league baseball stadiums as a draw for foot traffic and economic development.

After the demolition, Rutgers-Camden and Camden city are expected to pony up $15 million, $7.5 million apiece, to develop the area into a complex of sports fields for the university's Division III sports teams and the city recreation department. Another $155,000 is also included to the $939,300 demolition contract awarded to the R. E. Pierson construction company to dig up irrigation and drainage lines at the former 6,400-seat ballpark.

The former Campbell's Field minor league baseball park is scheduled to be torn down.

The demolition work is scheduled to begin this month and take about three months to complete. Items such as some seats and other pieces of the ballpark will be salvaged, a county spokesman said. The Ewing Cole firm has been chosen to design the new athletic fields.

"There is no doubt in my mind that it will be sad to see the stadium go, but the redevelopment of those acres will create an amenity and asset open to all for perpetuity," Louis Cappelli, Camden County freeholder director said in a statement. "...This will be the single best investment for Camden's youth athletic infrastructure in the modern era."

The goal in 2001 was to make the Camden waterfront a destination and help fuel the resurgence of a once proud, blue-collar cousin of Philadelphia, the home of the Campbell Soup Company for nearly 150 years.

At a groundbreaking in 1999, Gov. Christie Whitman said the "partners" behind the investment "have heard the message from the movie Field of Dreams: 'If you build it, they will come.'"

Public records show about $21 million was spent through a combination of direct loans and bonds floated through a private bank to build the stadium.

The state Economic Development Authority issued a $7 million bond through Santander Bank, which was known then as Sovereign Bank, along with a direct loan of $2 million. That was added to $6.5 million loan from the Delaware River Port Authority, $2 million from Rutgers, the state university, and $3.7 million in equity financing obtained by the builder.

The EDA kicked in an additional $1.2 million for upkeep of the already debt-strapped stadium in 2004, just three years after it opened. In 2015 the Camden Riversharks independent minor-league baseball team, the major tenant of the stadium, folded under a pile of debt.

Camden County stepped in to purchase the property in 2015 to save it from foreclosure and settled the litigation by paying $3.5 million to pay off the outstanding debt. The EDA and DRPA had negotiated a ticket surcharge with the Riversharks that would span 15 years to get back a fraction of the money they were owed. But four months later the team folded after just one payment.

"We received one surcharge payment; they were only obligated to pay the surcharge if they sold tickets to games and 2015 was their last season," said Erin Gold, an EDA spokeswoman.

DRPA borrowing for projects around the Philadelphia region, including Campbell's Field, led to a $1 toll increase at the bridges and still makes up about 10 percent of the agency's debt, the Associated Press reported in 2016. The DRPA no longer finances economic development projects.

A Camden Riversharks game in the former Campbell's Field, now scheduled to be demolished.

Despite promises that no taxpayer funds would be used to pay down the debt, the Camden County Improvement Authority has been subsidizing a $300,000 annual debt payment through its budget.

"Unfortunately, the state, in its lack of wisdom, built a baseball stadium for an unaffiliated, independent league (team) that folded and $35 million disappeared," South Jersey political powerbroker George Norcross III said last year.

A hotel and headquarters for the American Water Company are part of more than $1 billion in current development projects on Camden's waterfront and are part of nearly $3 billion of development in its downtown, local officials said.

Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @bduhart. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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