CROWN POINT | Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tossed back a shot of Crown Royal with Bronko's owner Nick Tarailo during a 2008 campaign visit.
Hollywood star Johnny Depp and a big-name supporting cast filmed "Public Enemies" here.
And now Crown Point hopes to make its mark, nationally, in amateur sports with Wednesday's announcement that the Bo Jackson Legacy Athletic Center will be built on the 91-acre site of the former City Water Plant.
"The 3,200 athletes who participate in athletic activities here in Crown Point need a home," Mayor Dave Uran said at a news conference in the packed Crown Point High School Bulldog Center.
Using the Bo Jackson Elite Sports Center in Lockport as a design model, the 155,000-square foot fieldhouse structure in Crown Point has $3.4 million in financial backing from the Bo Jackson Group and is tentatively scheduled to open in early 2011.
Featured will be year-round athletic fields and court surfaces within an air-supported fabric structure similar to Lockport's.
"I wish I was a kid so I could come out and start my (sports) career over again," said Uran, a former varsity boys basketball coach at Hanover Central.
Also in partnership with Jackson is John Cangelosi, who played 13 seasons of Major League Baseball with seven teams, including the White Sox, and currently is an instructor at the Lockport site.
"To get to that next level and advance, you have to practice and know how to practice," Cangelosi said.
Jackson needs no introduction. He won the 1985 Heisman Trophy at Auburn, played for the Kansas City Royals and Oakland Raiders from 1987 through 1990, and once belted three home runs (412 feet, 464 and 400) in a game at old Yankee Stadium.
Talk about your natural athlete. Jackson rushed for 221 yards against Seattle on Monday Night Football, just 29 days after his first NFL carry. He got his first four-hit effort in only his fifth MLB game.
Jackson, 47, did not attend Wednesday's news briefing because of illness but had recently visited Crown Point High School and fell in love with its new athletic facilities.
"Bo is here (in spirit)," Uran said, "and that gives instant credibility."
"We are about more than sports," spokesman Jim Thompson added. "If you know Bo Jackson, when he gets an opportunity to talk to kids, which is very frequently inside our facility, he never talks about sports. He talks to them about education, about life, and how he would've never played professional sports if not for his mom.
"He wanted to play football in grammar school but his mom said 'No' because he wasn't getting it done in the classroom. He drives that message home to every kid he talks to."
Jackson returned to Auburn in 1995 and graduated with a degree in family and child development. He had promised his mother he would do so before she died of cancer.
Thompson said he's presently working with interested youth groups to build similar facilities in Alabama, Philadelphia, California and Arizona.
Crown Point senior Scott Donley attended one of Cangelosi's baseball camps in Lockport and was impressed.
"It was a three-day camp, but it helped out a bunch," Donley said. "At most camps you go to, you work with an instructor and the (college) coaches don't get to see you as much. But at this camp, the coaches threw to you and helped you correct things so they could see your full potential.
"There were probably 20 Division I schools there, and you get one-on-one time with the coach. I was shocked. I just wish they had started this out here when I was younger."
Donley will attend Virginia Tech on a baseball scholarship.
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