“I just think of Iris Fields as this magical place where 400 or more kids come together and play baseball from the spring all the way through the fall,” says David Pyrooz, who has coached his son’s NBLL team for the last six years. “It’s just the most picturesque setting for baseball with the Flatirons in the background. These fields have come to define people's childhoods for generations now.”
But on February 4, the NBLL community learned things could look different for future generations when Boulder County announced plans to sell the North Broadway Complex at 1333 Iris Avenue, which includes Iris Fields.
“To take all the games at Iris and move them to another venue, I think it would definitely change the trajectory of North Boulder Little League,” says league president Kirk Fronckiewicz. “It certainly would raise the cost.”
Currently, the NBLL pays what Fronckiewicz describes as a nominal fee to use the fields each year. The league also rents field time from local schools to supplement when needed, which costs even more. Moving all league programming to those venues would be difficult, requiring higher fees that could make the sport inaccessible to some kids.
According to Fronckiewicz, the NBLL rarely turns kids away due to financial need, and offers scholarships to those who can’t afford the fees. The NBLL also runs a free summer program for children with disabilities who want to play baseball.
Since learning the fields would be sold, Boulder's baseball community has rallied, starting a petition on February 12 that already has 2,000 signatures. The petition asks Boulder County to halt the sale and engage with the community to explore preservation options such as historic designation or a public land dedication.
Through county spokesperson Alison Ecklund, Boulder County says the sale is due to the county purchasing and relocating to a new Boulder County Community Hub at 2525 28th Street. The sale would ensure the land doesn't go unused and help the county recuperate costs from purchasing the $14.2 million piece of land for the new hub. Right now, several county departments operate from buildings on the North Boulder Complex, which also contains Iris Fields; the move will reduce the county’s office footprint and save money, according to Ecklund.
Ecklund says residents and NBLL supporters will be able to weigh in on the needs of the new complex while the county pursues a sale through an update this spring to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, which guides land use decisions in the area.
According to Fronckiewicz, the sale has been looming for a while. When the NBLL and the county meet each January, the NBLL discusses what improvements the league is looking to make at the fields. This January, the county mentioned some sale options were floating around, so Fronckiewicz decided to hold back on $25,000 to $50,000 worth of improvements the NBLL had considered for the upcoming season.
The NBLL found out with the rest of the public on February 4 that a sale was imminent; the announcement didn’t mention Iris Fields.
The 12U All-Stars of North Boulder Little League won the state championship this summer.
North Boulder Little League
Under the memorandum of use between the NBLL and the county, the county does some landscaping and mowing while the league has been in charge of other additions and improvements such as batting cages installed last year. The partnership has been great, Fronckiewicz says...but now the league hopes the partnership will continue.
The fields were built in 1957, originally serving as home to the Prairie Little League, which merged with the Skyline Little League in the early 1970s to form the NBLL. The NBLL has a long history of success, with more state championships than any other Little League in the country, according to the petition. This year, the NBLL is welcoming members of the first championship teams from 1974 and 1976 back for a fifty-year celebration.
In 2024, the 12U All-Stars won the Colorado State Championship and played in the regional tournament in California. The 11U All-Stars, Pyrooz’s team, also won the State Championship.
“Last year when our twelve-year-olds made it to the regional tournament in California, seeing ESPN show all these shots of Iris Fields as part of their televised broadcast was a point of pride, not just for our Little League, but I'd say even for the city as a whole,” Pyrooz says.
Maintaining a place where children can play outdoors, away from screens and with others is important to Pyrooz. He played Little League as a child; when his family moved to Boulder about a decade ago, Pyrooz put his son in t-ball as soon as he could. Now, many of his son’s friends, and even his, are from the NBLL.
Alison Jaffe, a member of the NBLL board whose son has played in the league for six years, says the proximity to elementary schools like Foothill and Crest View in North Boulder is part of what makes Iris Fields a perfect place to serve as the league’s home. Without a central location, she worries fewer busy families would be able to make Little League work with their schedules, especially if it costs more to play.
“It's a really essential part of our community,” Jaffe says. “You have a beautiful view of the mountains. It's nice to drive down toward Iris and have this big spot of green — and there's nothing better than driving by on a spring or summer evening and seeing four games going on, or two games and two practices, and seeing little kids running around in the center where all the fields meet.”
The community is more than just the kids actively playing Little League, Jaffe points out. It’s the younger siblings who learn how to operate the scoreboards, the older kids who stick around to serve as umpires and the parents who volunteer to make it all work.
"Should [the fields] end up being closed down, or sold off for housing or apartments or condos or anything of that sort, it just sort of feeds into the popular rhetoric of Boulder being unfriendly to children and not having spaces where children can congregate in structured settings," Pyrooz adds. "I’d really hate to see that happen.”
Fronckiewicz says losing parts of the NBLL community over the sale of the parcel “would be nearly criminal.”
The county and the NBLL have an agreement for the 2025 season, but beyond that the future is uncertain. Fronckiewicz says the league will have to “take a hard look from a finance standpoint” if Iris Fields are sold and destroyed or sold to a developer who would significantly raise the price to use the fields.
An ideal situation would be to preserve the status quo where the county and NBLL work together to maintain and improve the fields, Fronckiewicz says. The entire parcel is over seventeen acres, so league advocates have floated the idea that the county could split the parcel to keep the portion of the land where Iris Fields sits while the rest could become whatever the community agrees on during the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan update.
Ecklund says the county has heard the NBLL supporters' call for something to be done, but that there are no plans to divide the parcel.
“Action by the county to predetermine future use of the parcel (or any portion of the property) ahead of sale would, in essence, limit reuse opportunity input before the public input,” Ecklund says.
According to Fronckiewicz, the NBLL will pivot if the fields are sold to keep the league going, but it’s a daunting prospect. In the meantime, the NBLL community isn’t going to give up on preserving the fields.
“Even though my son is going to age out in two years, I feel very dedicated to both the fields and the league in general, and I just hope that more kids get to enjoy it,” Jaffe says.
Boulder’s press announcements say the update to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan and opportunities for the community to weigh in on the future of the parcel will occur “as early as this spring,” but no date is set yet.
