[From the New York Times, Sunday, April 1, 2001]

By ROBERT STRAUSS

CAMDEN, NJ - It was the summer of '59, and the word out of the Philadelphia Phillies training camp in Clearwater. Fla., was that a local 19-year-old phenom from Camden was going to make the pitching staff.

His name was Ed Keegan. Unfortunately, Mr. Keegan lasted only nine innings for the Phillies, giving up 19 hits and 18 runs and losing all three games he pitched.

Camden's baseball legacy hasn't improved much since then. No other Camden resident has made it to the Major Leagues since Mr. Keegan, and the city has turned primarily to its perennially top-ranked high school basketball teams for sporting solace.

But now, rising on the banks of the Delaware River where a Campbell Soup Company plant once stood is Campbell's Field, soon to be home to the Camden Riversharks of the Atlantic League, an independent baseball minor league.

The stadium and the Riversharks are the realization of a dream for Stephen R. Shilling, a builder who developed such upscale communities as Short Hills in Cherry Hill and Eagle Acre in Harrison Township. Just a few years ago, Mr. Shilling saw opportunity on the waterfront where most people saw only dashed hopes.

The two main attractions on the Delaware River, the Thomas Kean Aquarium and the Sony Blockbuster E-Center, were not living up to hopes of reviving this city. Attendance at the aquarium was languishing, and few concerts were being produced at the entertainment center.

Mr. Shilling, president and chief executive of the Quaker Group, had been building some low-income housing here and was looking for a redevelopment project.

"It was June 1998 and one of our attorneys finally convinced us the stadium and ball team were the right project," Mr. Shilling said in a telephone interview from his office in Voorhees.

Mr. Shilling soon discovered that any team affiliated with a Major League club would have to get permission to operate from the Phillies, who play just across the Delaware. Instead, he went to the owners of the Atlantic League, which has teams from New Hampshire to Pennsylvania, three of which are already in New Jersey -- in Somerset, Atlantic City and Newark.

"They were all successful businessmen," he said. "The league was structured correctly. You were required to play in a new ballpark, which required an investment for the long term."

For a model, he looked toward the riverfront stadium in Trenton, where the Thunder has been drawing good crowds for several years.

"I stared at the Camden waterfront, where I would take my kids to the aquarium," said Mr. Shilling, who lives in Medford. "We'd spend an hour there, 15 minutes in the gift shop and go home. I knew it needed more down there."

With that, he began dealing. In the end the arrangement was essentially that the Quaker Group would build a 6,425-seat stadium for which Campbell paid an unspecified amount for naming rights. The ownership of the stadium itself will be passed along to Rutgers-Camden, which will use it for athletics. The River sharks will lease it back for 40 years and pay Camden 50 cents for each fan in lieu of taxes.

"We're going to be successful, so everyone will win," said Mr. Shilling.