Orlando’s Historic Preservation Board wants Tinker Field to be declared a local landmark — a designation that would stall the city’s plans to tear it down.
It would be irresponsible not to try to save the rundown ballpark where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke, one member of the preservation board said in voting to start the process of granting it landmark status.
“I honestly believe that with the significance of a person of the stature of Dr. King, 300 years from now people will be saying, ‘How could you let the only place where he spoke in Orlando be destroyed?’ ” board member Jeffrey Thompson said. “I think that alone is so significant we would be derelict in our duty not to make this motion today.”