Who remembers Ray Kinsella?

About 30 years ago, Kinsella, a Midwest farmer, built a regulation baseball diamond in his cornfield in Dyersville, Iowa. He said a mysterious voice told him, “If you build it, he will come.”

“He” turned out to be the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson who, along with his Chicago White Sox teammates, were banned from baseball for life after getting caught throwing the 1919 World Series. They needed a place to play, apparently.

It was as much Hollywood cinema as Iowa corn, a movie with a fairy-tale finish — an endless column of vehicle headlights approaching a brilliantly lit ballfield amid the gathering dusk — he built it, and everybody came. Shoeless Joe, who some called a better player than Pete Rose if not a more egregious sinner, found posthumous joy and fulfillment.

“Field of Dreams” premiered in 1989, the same year PennDOT opened Interstate 279 connecting Cranberry Township with downtown Pittsburgh. It doesn’t take much pine tar to get a good grip on an obvious analogy.

The southwest corner of Butler County has been building a municipal field of dreams for 30 years. And the people came. They keep coming. Nearly 1,000 new residents were added in 2017.

Dick Hadley, chairman of the Cranberry Township board of supervisors, says the township’s growth started in earnest with I-279. Before then, Cranberry didn’t have its own post office. It didn’t even get its own ZIP code until 1994.

Jerry Andree was hired as township manager in 1991. Andree helped institute a comprehensive township plan in 1995. That led to an overhaul of the zoning ordinance, land development/subdivision ordinance and public and private improvements code in 1996.

The township has not strayed from its plan. Township officials say the fruit of their devotion to the planning process is an interconnected community with amenities like green space, good schools, a strong library, recreation opportunities, vibrant retail districts — and steady growth that’s spilling over into adjoining municipalities.

The rest of the county needs to take notice. Route 228 is being improved eastward. Expansion will continue to happen there and will turn north when it reaches Route 8. Expansion will also continue along the Route 19/I-79 corridor. Route 68 improvements would be a logical next step.

Better get busy building it, because they’re coming. They’re already coming.

The map on Thursday’s Butler Eagle Business page tells the story: In 2017, Cranberry and three adjoining municipalities in the southwest corner added nearly 1,000 people — 994 to be exact.

Meanwhile, Butler city and township combined had a net loss of 132 people in 2017.

Population loss is not part of any community’s plan — unless the plan is to close schools, employers, stores, churches, theaters and the like.

“Mission Impossible?”

No, that’s the wrong analogy. Let’s stick with the “Field of Dreams” template.

The Census Bureau says population gains are likely. People are migrating north and east. They will come, in other words.

The question is: will we build it? Will we adopt and adhere to a comprehensive plan — something as visionary as Cranberry’s — for central Butler County? Will we anticipate the needs and preferences of a population that hasn’t moved here yet?

There is an alternative, of course. It involves closing more schools, employers, stores, churches, theaters and the like.