The city Little League group hit hard by a spring shed fire is now dealing with a fall bleacher theft, league officials said Friday.
JC Little League officials on Friday discovered four sets of bleachers missing from their Oregon Avenue fields. The aluminum bleachers are valued at $15,000.
“We’re trying to rebuild after one [problem] and we find out they’ve swiped our bleachers,” league treasurer John Wilson said.
The bleachers were last seen Wednesday when the grass was being mowed.
The seating, two three-level and two four-level bleachers, was secured on concrete pads, Wilson said. Whoever took them somehow disassembled them and carted them away.
League officials contacted police and filed a report. Police checked Predel’s on the chance that the bleachers would be sold for scrap, but they weren’t there, Police Department spokesman Lt. Brian Kilcullen said.
Barring the bleachers’ recovery, the league would have to return to old wooden-style bleachers, Wilson said.
The disappearance comes as the league has been rebuilding its Fourth Street shed, destroyed by a May fire. Inside the shed was between $7,000 and $9,000 worth of field maintenance equipment.
The loss spurred a series of donations from individuals and businesses to get the league back on its feet.
The league, which includes children from the Bellevue and upper Union Street areas, has just over 300 children participating, ranging in age from 5 to 12. The Fourth Street site is used mainly for the younger children, Wilson said.
Parents and volunteers are working to rebuild the shed with donated blocks, Wilson said. But that effort has also been marred by vandalism. Blocks have been broken and cement bags ripped.
Wilson said he hopes witnesses will step forward to help find who took the bleachers.
He also hoped that because they’re not something people would normally have that might help identify the thief.
“They’re one of those things that are hard to turn in,” Wilson said.
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