National Park Service Forced Changes In Cubs' Sign Plan

As was reported in Crain's and posted here earlier Wednesday, the Cubs are going before the city Landmarks Commission to have some tweaks made in their outfield sign plan in order to qualify for federal tax credits desired to help pay for part of the Wrigley restoration.

That's not the only reason the signage is being changed, according to this Tribune article published late Wednesday. The National Park Service, the agency responsible for approving projects like this for tax credit qualification, is also involved.

This, in particular, caught my eye in Ameet Sachdev's Tribune report:

But the Park Service also said the team must reduce the length of an LED video ribbon board planned for the fascia of the upper deck grandstand in light of the proposed right-field video screen, according to documents the agency provided to the Tribune on Wednesday morning.

This is the first time I think I've seen any published mention of a ribbon board for the fascia of the upper deck grandstand. I've long said that the Cubs should have one of those; virtually every new stadium built has one, and they can serve as a conduit for useful information as well as more advertising space.

In other words, since the Cubs want a right-field video screen, the NPS said they have to have a smaller screen in right field. That's also likely the reason the right-field screen was moved from its original proposed location. You can see both of those in the rendering at the top of this post. Again, this is what BCB's Mike Bojanowski did on Photoshop after I sent him what Danny Ecker wrote about the revisions in Crain's. Click here for a larger version of that image which shows the entire outfield panorama.

I hope we'll have more revised renderings after the Cubs make their presentation to the Landmarks Commission Thursday, but since this article was out there, I wanted to present it to you now.