Future of Wrigley Field
by sanks on Oct 23, 2008 10:01 PM CDT
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PrintI believe the biggest job for the next ownership besides winning the series is the future of the ballpark. It must be settled within the next 5 years. The Cubs can't continue at Wrigley in it's present state. I love historic ballparks like Comiskey, Tiger Stadium and Fenway. However Comiskey and Tiger Stadium are no more. Wrigley can only survive with a Solider Field type renovation. You can save the Ivy, the Scoreboard, the field and the demensions. However partial naming rights may have to be sold to avoid public money. This might mean Wrigley at Company Park. The Twins are building their new ballpark on 8 1/2 acres the same size footprint as Wrigley. Their park will also be totally ADA compliant. We need better bathrooms, better ramps, better concessions, better sightlines. In the Terrace seats you can't see the flight of the ball. We need a cantivelar not columns. Columns have no place in the seating bowl today. I say lets have a park with seating like this. A Field level, the bleachers, a club level, suite level and a upper deck. The Field Level would contain 19,000 seats, the bleachers 5,000, the Club level 7,000, the suite level 1,000 and the upper deck 12,000. The suites would be in between the Field level and the Club level. What does everybody think?
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of SB Nation or Al Yellon, managing editor (unless it's a FanPost posted by Al). FanPost opinions are valued expressions of opinion by passionate and knowledgeable baseball fans.
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Yeah, I do agree.....
..we need to put the past 100 years behind us and have a “fresh start” in a “new” facility.
So let’s play at U.S. Cellular Field or another location for a season.
It will even help relieve some of the stress players feel when they step onto the field in a Cubs uniform.
Instead of the “..will the Cubs win this year?” it will be “the Cubs open this season in a beautifully renovated Wrigley Field.”
Make sure Wrigley is structurally sound and make repairs to make sure it stays that way.
Renovate the scoreboard. We need to have this modernized. Get a nice jumbo-tron that fits on the same frame so it doesn’t look too different.
It’s time to renovate.
I’m predicting that ownership does decide to keep Wrigley and do these type of renovations. I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts being seriously talked about within the next 3-5 years.
Hopefully less.
yes!
tear it down….i will not miss it one bit
Dinosaurs? "Didn't exist. You can't say there were dinosaurs when you never saw them." -Carl Everett
Renovations Necessary
It’s going to be tough for the Cubs to have to play “home” games at the Cell or at Miller Park as an emergency backup to the Cell. That will be necessary. I would not be surprised if the Cubs had to vacate Wrigley for a whole season. The renovation of Wrigley will be far less expensive than building a new ballpark. I could see the Cubs staying at Wrigley for another 40 years after the renovation, so it’s worth doing.
"The big possum walks late." - Harry Caray
Okay, Renovations Not as Extensive
as the ones proposed in the post. I, more meant, the renovations that have been proposed by Al.
"The big possum walks late." - Harry Caray
You want Wrigley to be renovated like that albatross
on the lakefront?
Forgetting for just a moment Ted-I-got-you-your-stadium-Phillips and the short sightedness of the Bears and city while using half-a-billion taxpayers’ money to make the place SMALLER (and thus put a hurtin’ on the city’s 2016 Olympic bid), renovations such as that simply cannot be made at Wrigley that would be cost-effective.
From a mechanical design perspective, ridding the park of support columns will signifcantly reduce seating capacity. Cantilever design pushes back upper levels significantly. There isn’t enough land there to do that and keep capacity above 41k. You can’t get 44k and cantilevers with only 2 levels on that land space. Remember the ballpark is contained within about a city block in each direction; nearly impossible by today’s ballpark standards. Hanging over all of this is the Landmark status given to certain portions of the park.
I agree the last few rows of the terrace cannot see [upper] ball flight. They probably won’t pull those seats though, unless there are more lucrative seating revenue opportunities out there later (e.g. CBOE-style auctions). I have to wonder though if PSL’s would be in Wrigley’s future when renovation is completed.
Once the offices can be moved out of the ballpark, significant renovation to the concourses can be made. Club-like restaurants like the Stadium Club and Locker Room Clubs at the UC can be built. This will also impact possible changes to the Mezzanine suites. Suites (or no suites) are why Chicago Stadium is no more. The only way that old barn could have had any suites put in was to put them where the 1st balcony seats were. The ends of the building were too close to the ice to do anything there so the “New Chicago Stadium” or what we call the UC today, was conceived. It has a staggering 216 luxury suites. It is the ultimate gold-mine in the ~20k seating capacity arenas in all of N.America. But with that went the intimacy of Chicago Stadium with it’s 6-level keyboard / 4,000 pipe, pipe organ.
The Trib made a big mistake in 1981. They had the chance to buy all those buildings across Waveland and Sheffield. They could have torn them down and made many ballpark changes; who knows what could have been done.
My only suggestion for scoreboard renovation would be to get all the scores up there at once. Right now the scoreboard only supports 12 games. The pre-1937 scoreboard BTW supported only 8 games because that’s all they needed back then. The inning-by-inning numbers and center section eyelets cannot and should not ever change. Ridding the park of that scoreboard is akin to removing the ivy; ain’t gonna happen.
Jumbotron? Forget it; won’t happen. Smaller screens maybe on the facade of the upper deck? Maybe but it has to be weighed against ribbon boards (again like the UC, those go all the way around 2 levels at the UC) or some hybrid combination that yields viewable replays and still have advertising.
If I had to guess right now, the plan would be a multi-year carefully orchestrated design that would make many concourse renovations, increase the suites, significantly increase seating revenue, all while maintaining the old-park feel that Wrigley has stood for nearly the past century.
Sweet Lou for Mayor in '11.
by blackhawk24 on Oct 24, 2008 8:33 AM CDT reply actions 1 recs
Excellent analysis...
… and I think this is precisely what will happen, though I disagree with you on a Jumbotron. I think the Cubs would like to have that source of revenue, and their only issue is how to do it while still preserving what’s there.
I did write about this exact topic at great length only 11 days ago.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
On the plus side...
…sanks made it through an entire fanpost without using the word “sucks.”
"I see I'm not the only one around here who can't hold his water." - Final words of the water pipe in the visiting team dugout, Dodger Stadium, October 4, 2008.
Plans were announced back in the 70s to knock the east and west ends
of Chicago Stadium out to increase seating capacity. Obviously, it never happened. But had they really wanted to save the place, the Bulls and Hawks could have played in Rosemont for a couple of seasons while they gutted the old building, busted out the ends, raised the roof etc. In the end, for what they wanted, it was no doubt easier just to build the current sports mall across the street.
I agree that there isn’t room for cantilevered decking – especially on the first base side where the park sits about four feet from Addison Street at one point. Maybe an architect could tell us how it could be done solely with counter-weight but short of that, I’m for tearing down the entire grandstand and putting up a modern structure in its place. It would be nice if you could turn the park a bit to the northwest which would open up room outside the park along Addison. But if you did that the bleachers would be out of whack and you’d just have to tear the whole thing down.
I’ve been going there for 45 years for Cubs and Bears games and the playing field itself is still the most beautiful in sports. But with each year I grow less and less enchanted with the park itself. If you had asked me 20 years ago if I thought Wrigley Field should be ripped down and rebuilt I’d have said no way. Now, with all the crappy looking bleachers on the roofs across the streets, the inability of the concourses to handle the almost daily sellouts, the terrible looking exterior which the owners seem to have no desire to return to its former wrought iron beauty – I just don’t feel the same way about the park as I used to. Save the bleachers and you can stick the marquee on a new grandstand in 2012.
Organ transplant
I was always surprised that the organ from the old Stadium was never rebuilt or replicated in some way at the UC. It was such a quintessential feature of Bulls and (especially) Hawks games for so long and it would have given the UC at least one feature that wasn’t utterly generic. Maybe it was too expensive or impractical to actually remove the pipes and everything from the old place but, at the very least, they could’ve installed the keyboard console.
Apparently, the console now belongs to one of the Maloof brothers.
"Some people will look at a glass of water and say it's half-empty, while another guy will look at it and say it's half-full. A Cubs fan looks at the same glass and asks, "When's it gonna spill?" - Mike Royko
by LaddieRenfroe on Oct 24, 2008 12:22 PM CDT up reply actions
There were around
4,000 pipes in several sections contained within the rafter system at the Stadium, not to mention the turbines that drove those pipes. If you ever looked upwards, there were these white-looking boxes, rooms actually that had a series of louvers on them. They contained the pipe systems where the sound would come out. It would have been most expensive (and dollar Bill Wirtz was a tight-wad as we all know) to pull them out. Amost literally, the Stadium was built around the Barton pipe organ.
The organ console itself however was bought and moved to AZ. An most unfortunately, it was destroyed in a fire a short time afterwards.
Sweet Lou for Mayor in '11.
Was it destroyed?
The link I posted says that the Stadium console wasn’t in the Arizona fire and was eventually sold to one of the Maloof brothers (casino magnates, they own the Sacto Kings). There’s a link within that link about the installation of the Stadium console in the Maloof residence.
I don’t personally know if any of the information in those links is correct but, with all the photos and descriptions, it does strike me as being credible.
Really though, the point is not the existence of the organ console. Rather, the organ just serves as a “worst case scenario” in which a sentimental part of Chicago sports was literally discarded.
"Some people will look at a glass of water and say it's half-empty, while another guy will look at it and say it's half-full. A Cubs fan looks at the same glass and asks, "When's it gonna spill?" - Mike Royko
by LaddieRenfroe on Oct 24, 2008 7:03 PM CDT up reply actions
IIRC it was in a news article
…but being quite a few years now maybe I misunderstood what was stated.
Yeah, the bottom line was the place was just taken apart. It was years before even a centre ice marker was put in place. I can remember seeing the wrecking ball start on the West wall that Feb morning. Then several times coming by – mostly to get bricks from workers – I could still feel the energy that used to be in there. The most disgusting thing was to see parts of the pipes and the turbines either crashing to the seating areas/rink below as they moved from West to East. Some of the seats were even left in there. Ironically one of the last areas to be demolished was the section X mezzanine where I sat for so many years.
Sweet Lou for Mayor in '11.
Wrigley does need to be renovated.
It needs to be brought up to date as far as ADA compliance, amenities, comforts, etc… However, Wrigley is built like a tank- it is still structurally sound. The grandstands need to be torn down, and re-built, with no columns & better sightlines. In addition, the triangle building needs to be built, in order to provide needed space for offices, players training, etc. The Cubs would probably have to play 1/2 or 3/4 of a season at the Cell, but could likely avoid a full year away.
As far the new Soldier Field- in twenty years, people will look back & see how ahead of it’s time the renovation was. Sure, it’s not perfect- but I think it will be the standard as far as renovations in the coming decades.
Jimmyeatworld
Forget about ridding the park of the columns
there simply isn’t enough real estate there to keep capacity and remove columns. IMHO if the columns were to be removed the capacity would be reduced by 10,000 or more. That simply isn’t desirable that is unless you want guaranteed PSL’s in addition to an immediate increase in ticket prices of over 25%, coupled with CBOE auctions all over the place.
Sweet Lou for Mayor in '11.
The only complaint I have against the Soldier Field renovation is that a retractable roof
stadium could have been built for the cost of the renovation. But all things considered and Chicago and Illinois politics being what they are, the end result is pretty good. It’s amazing anything gets done in this city. Everyone has to get their piece of the pie and the thing that you are trying to accomplish becomes secondary. It’s really a kind of weird, perverted puzzle.
"Hats for bats.....keep bats warm." - Pedro Cerrano
"Hey bartender, Jobu needs a refill !!!!!!!" - Eddie Harris
by willie mays hayes' gloves on Oct 24, 2008 9:59 AM CDT up reply actions
I guess you can call it pretty good
if that means that the place had its Landmark status stripped because of what they did to the effect of the colonades. The fact is they used half-a-billion dollar taxpayer money and that’s all they got out of it, other than reducing seating capacity from 67,000 to 61,500, it could have been better. It’s nice inside but from outside especially flying over the city, its horrible. I doubt a retractable roof would have been done but it would have been interesting.
If they only thought about a possible Olympic complex back then. That would mean an 80,000-90,000 seat capacity stadium. If they had that already in place, the revenue potential of bringing the Olympics here could have been great.
I only hope Wrigley is never bastardized like Soldier Field was. I’d rather Wrigley be torn down like Chicago Stadium than to have it look like some sick hybrid between US Commiscular and Chase Field.
Sweet Lou for Mayor in '11.
by blackhawk24 on Oct 24, 2008 10:29 AM CDT up reply actions
I think the whole effort was a huge waste. I think they should have built a new stadium
somewhere else instead of ending up with what they have now. “Pretty good” is a relative term. Believe me, in no way was I complementing that effort. My retractable roof comment was for a new stadium not for that odd deal they ended up with. As I said, politics around here results in some pretty weird things.
"Hats for bats.....keep bats warm." - Pedro Cerrano
"Hey bartender, Jobu needs a refill !!!!!!!" - Eddie Harris
by willie mays hayes' gloves on Oct 24, 2008 10:38 AM CDT up reply actions
Keep in mind when you say "bastardized"...
… that Wrigley Field doesn’t look anything now like it did when it was built, or even in 1938 after the current ivy walls were installed.
There used to be really nice looking wrought iron around the entire outside. That was removed in the ’50s when the chain link fencing and concrete panels were put in (those concrete panels on the Addison side are U-G-L-Y and have to go).
If they could RESTORE old-fashioned touches while putting in modern amenities, that’d be the best of both worlds.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
Oh I understand Al
and the fact those concrete panels are ugly what was done WITH Wrigley the past 50-70 years is nothing compared what was done TO Soldier Field.
Was it all the way to the 50’s when the wrought iron was removed? I remember my Dad talking about that but I thought I remember him saying it was taken out earlier, about the same time the storage silos were demolished along Clark St.
It would be so cool if the street car tracks were still there too.
Sweet Lou for Mayor in '11.
That would have been the late 1940's, then.
Because the storage silos were still there during the 1945 World Series — there are photos of that.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
I think the silos were still there in the early-mid 60s
when I went to my first games there.
As I mentioned in my post, the wrought iron touches on the exterior would go along way toward making the outside of the park something other than the disappointment it is.
As I recall from recent interviews with Crane Kenney...
…this seemed to be the plan going forward.
"I see I'm not the only one around here who can't hold his water." - Final words of the water pipe in the visiting team dugout, Dodger Stadium, October 4, 2008.
I have heard a rumor
that when Halas died and willed the team to his family, it was stated that they couldn’t have a dome or the artificial turf anymore and if they ever put that in they would void the will and someone else would get the team. That is why there isn’t a dome or astro turf or the fake grass. Take it for what it’s worth.
by niuhuskie224 on Oct 24, 2008 10:54 AM CDT up reply actions
If that's true it's pretty crazy. It doesn't make sense to hamstring a team with the
ghost of a past owner. A big-time franchise doesn’t operate that way.
"Hats for bats.....keep bats warm." - Pedro Cerrano
"Hey bartender, Jobu needs a refill !!!!!!!" - Eddie Harris
by willie mays hayes' gloves on Oct 24, 2008 10:59 AM CDT up reply actions
I thought I heard
that they did a survey and a vast majority of Bears fans said they didn’t want a dome.
Personally I wish they would have torn the whole thing down and just built a gigantic 80-90,000 seat bowl with some skyboxes for extra measure and then put the columns on top of that.
Honestly I still believe that this is the best stadium in the NFL.
Some stadiums try to be to cute and fancy. Keep it simple.
---AC 00 00 00 - Believe
A retractable dome would have been fine.
That way, play outdoors when it’s nice, indoors when it’s not…. AND have a facility that could be used year round for concerts and other events. Had they built that, we could have had a Super Bowl and NCAA Final Four in Chicago by now.
Just sayin’.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
+1
I have no idea why they would survey the fans about whether or not they wanted a retractable dome. This is 2008 and the decision should be about how to get the most use out of the stadium, not whether or not some crazy fans want to sit out in the middle of winter and freeze their collective butts off.
The taxpayers are footing the bill for the most part. The stadium should be optimized to getas much use out of it as possible. A retractable dome would have given many more options.
"Hats for bats.....keep bats warm." - Pedro Cerrano
"Hey bartender, Jobu needs a refill !!!!!!!" - Eddie Harris
by willie mays hayes' gloves on Oct 24, 2008 2:01 PM CDT up reply actions
I guessed which one you meant before going to the link
The Colts’ new stadium looks pretty nice, modern and classic at the same time.
Tommie Agee was out.
by Weeghman Park on Oct 24, 2008 2:08 PM CDT up reply actions
yeah
that wasnt a difficult one to guess.
the colts new stadium is nice looking.
---AC 00 00 00 - Believe
Actually, it appears the Mets' new Citi Field will be quite nice.
Traditional looking on the outside with modern amenities.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
That 70's plan would have been great
for the regular seat addition but unfortunately the suites were the sticking point later on. Only thing I ever heard was they considered putting them in place of all the 1st balcony seats. That would have sucked bigtime even though I rarely sat there. Roof could never be raised since all the pipes and turbines driving them were there.
I really believe there’s a lot of creature-comforts that can be had once the offices are moved out. It’s all about revenue and improving the P&L.
Al and I disagree a bit on the Jumbotron but overall, a carefully planned design should be conceived that will take 2-4 off seasons without much of the overall atmosphere affected.
Sweet Lou for Mayor in '11.
But if they had added four thousand seats at either end
of the Stadium in the 70s then you could have later added two levels of suites in the first balcony and still had a 20,000 seat arena. And had they been willing to gut the old Stadium rather than tearing it down, I doubt they would have based their entire plan on whether or not the organ could be saved. If they wanted to raise the roof because it would mean more money in a top level of suites, organ be damned. Hell, they ended up tearing the whole place down and selling the organ for peanuts. The bottom line was, as with all things in sports these days, and as you pointed out: money.
I've spent a lot of my last 31 years at Wrigley
Truth be told I wouldn’t mind seeing the place abandoned for new ballpark. It’s become too much about the damned ballpark and not enough about shedding the Luvable Loser tag and winning the damned World Series. And if I am being honest then I have to say Wrigley is in need of MAJOR overhaul. Maybe the best and most economically prudent decision of all is to build a new ballpark somewhere else and keep Wrigley standing as a museum of sorts.
"Not that I don't feel like I'm part of the team, by no means, but when you get that nice celebration coming into the dugout and you're getting your ass hammered by guys, it's no better feeling than to have that done.'' -- Matt Stairs (aka The Professional Hitter)
It is in need of overhaul, that's true.
But Wrigley Field is NOT the problem, and no, it’s not “about the damned ballpark”. If you think the Cubs haven’t been trying to win very badly the last two years, you haven’t been paying attention.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
Al, I disagree with you
One other vital reality too is the landmark status attached to Wrigley. You can bet the ranch that the Daley administration and preservationist groups are going to give the Cubs bloody hell if they consider extensive renovation to Wrigley. Could become an unresolved political nightmare that drags on for years. Hence another strong argument for abandoning Wrigley and building a brand new Wrigley somewhere else, with the old Wrigley being turned into a museum piece.
"Not that I don't feel like I'm part of the team, by no means, but when you get that nice celebration coming into the dugout and you're getting your ass hammered by guys, it's no better feeling than to have that done.'' -- Matt Stairs (aka The Professional Hitter)
You're wrong.
The current Cub ownership has already done an extensive renovation — the bleachers — thoughtfully, not expensively, and within landmark guidelines.
I have absolutely no doubt that they’d do the same thing for the rest of the park, and we’d wind up with a better-looking place with modern amenities that would preserve the best of the past.
"That's my opinion and if you don't like it, well, I have others." ~ Groucho Marx
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