In 2014, I wrote a blog post about an abandoned and dilapidated New Deal era stadium in Paterson, N.J. At the time there were actual trees growing up through the cracks in the concrete stands and what was once the playing surface was a mix of dirt, broken glass and cracked pavement. Some Paterson high school kids had volunteered to paint the outside walls with paint donated by Valspar. That improved the eye sore but Hinchliffe Stadium had little going for it other than its history.

Built in 1932, Hinchliffe was home to two Negro League baseball teams, the New York Black Yankees and the New York Cubans. It had track meets, soccer, even auto racing. Abbott and Costello performed here. So did Sly and the Family Stone. It hosted numerous high school athletic events, most notably for many Patersonians, the annual Thanksgiving football games between the city’s two high schools, Central and Eastside.

The last Thanksgiving football game was played in 1996. In 1997, the stadium was condemned when part of the playing field collapsed into a sinkhole. It sat unused for some 25 years.

But around the time of my blog post, Hinchliffe was designated a national historic landmark. Shortly thereafter an act of Congress redrew the boundaries of the adjacent Great Falls National Park to include the stadium. A couple decades later a $100+ million renovation got underway that included a parking garage, senior housing and a yet-to-be completed Negro League museum.

Now, 85 years after the NewYork Black Yankees played their last full baseball season in Paterson, the independent minor league  New Jersey Jackals have begun their first Frontier League season here. There is even some talk of reviving the Thanksgiving Day football game between Eastside and Kennedy (the school that replaced Central).

Here’s a look at Hinchliffe reborn on Jackals game night.

Some before and after:

But however good the stadium renovation, this is what it looked like in the stands on a pleasently cool Thursday night. The Jackals would appear to have a massive marketing task ahead of them.