Deron Marquez, left, and John Carranza are searching for a city to welcome their plan to build an indoor baseball training center.
Last week, baseball tryouts were canceled at high schools and Little Leagues across the Southland, washed out by an unremitting and unrelenting series of Pacific storms. Perhaps, no one felt more frustrated than a couple of La Verne fathers, Deron Marquez and John Carranza, whose dream is to open an indoor Frozen Ropes (www.frozenropes.com [1]) baseball training and instructional center in La Verne or another foothill community.
According to the two men, Marquez a roving professor at UCLA, Claremont and other universities and Carranza, a graphics design artist whose son Isaiah played on La Verne’s Little League Championship Team that reached the divisional playoffs, their dream to open a training facility in the old Vons shopping center at Wheeler and Foothill was rejected by the City of La Verne.
“When we first had a conversation with the City’s planning department, their words to me, ‘We don’t want a batting cage. We want retail.”
Marquez and Carranza, however, believe their Frozen Ropes franchise, now numbering some 40 in the United States, would generate sufficient retail tax revenues by offering instructional classes, a retail store selling top-of-the-line baseball equipment and apparel, a coffee kiosk and other revenue-generators.
Moreover, they believe their Frozen Ropes facility would attract new fans and consumers to the old Vons center, circulating new dollars in such businesses as Mi Ranchito, Garden Square, Red Devil Pizza, CVS, Palace Pet Salon and other retail establishments now open in the center.
The closest Frozen Ropes franchise is in Wildomar, just north of Temecula. The next closest is San Diego. On the day, Carranza and Marquez visited the Wildomar center Frozen Ropes was conducting a coaching clinic for 75 Southland baseball coaches. The place was bustling with people and new dollars.
Both Marquez and Carranza said that if La Verne offered to help them locate in the city’s warehouse/industrial district, they would turn it down on the grounds that the Frozen Ropes facilities, which offers instruction for children as young as three, needs to be uptown and upscale, such as the My Gym location in the Target Center on Foothill, a safe outlet easily accessible to the public.
“Bowling alleys often serve as retail anchors,” Marquez reasoned. “Well, this would be a bowling alley, only with baseball and softball. To me, the logic is the same.”
Marquez and Carranza are also aware that La Verne currently boasts the Southern California Baseball-Softball Academy in La Verne (1328 Palomares St.), but believe their concept would simply make La Verne even more of a baseball town.
“There’s a reason you have McDonald’s, Burger King, Carl’s, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s … there’s choice in capitalism,” said Marquez, who teaches government. “We’re just simply trying to offer to an alternative to what other people are doing. Our project offers a lot more merit than what people think. The more we can educate people our concept, the more they will see that Frozen Ropes is a lot more than a batting cage.”
Opening a Frozen Ropes facility would cost somewhere between $250,000 and $400,000. According to Marquez and Carranza, producing the money is not the problem. It’s finding the right city to accommodate their dream.
“We would love to do it in La Verne; it’s where we live,” Carranza said. “But if that’s not the case, we understand and respect the city’s wishes.”
To gauge the community’s interest, Carranza and Marquez ask that local residents visit www.frozenropes.com/foothills [2], where they can express their interest and support for a Frozen Ropes franchise in this area.
They hope to take letters of support and interest to various foothills cities in hopes that one is ready to roll out the welcome mat for them to build a first-class indoor training and instructional facility for baseball.
Frozen Ropes gives their franchisees a lot of latitude in developing and customizing their facilities. Carranza and Marquez envision a facility large enough to accommodate a regular size indoor infield, multiple batting and pitching cages, team rooms, game rooms, etc.
If that center were already built, they said, La Verne’s teams wouldn’t have been left out in the cold last week. No more rain (or smoke or smog) delays. They could have been holding try-outs in their state-of-the-art facility.
Carranza and Marquez grew up watching Field of Dreams and are well familiar with the movie’s most famous line, “Build it, and they will come.”
“We can build it,” Marquez said. “We would just like some city to approve our plans.”