MESA, AZ — Mesa City Council approved a measure this week to spend $16.8 million to put women’s locker rooms and a performance hitting and pitching lab in the Chicago Cubs spring training facility.
The city of Mesa, which owns the ballpark located on a 140-acre site at 2330 W. Rio Salado Pkwy., will be covering the costs of the construction, but the Major League Baseball club will pay for the fixtures, furniture and equipment.
Since Sloan Park opened in 2014, the number of females employed by the Cubs and other MLB teams has increased, according to City Council documents. The existing training center only has locker rooms for men, “necessitating the construction of this new women’s locker room facility,” the documents state.
The approved project would also include building an 18,000 square foot building that will be equipped with modern motion capture technology to analyze and improve pitching and batting performance.
