Wrigley Field Construction Update: August 11

BCB's David Sameshima has some updates on portions of the Wrigley renovation project from Wednesday evening:

I was offered a bleacher ticket at the last minute, and was able to go to Tuesday's game. When I first saw Al in the bleachers, I informed him that I would probably just have a handful of photos for him. I only had a few interesting photos of the triangle lot. As the evening went on, I kept seeing other interesting scenes, so I ended up with a pretty good size photoset.Before I continue, I am going to make a change in terminology. Up till now, I have been using the term triangle lot, to refer to the development just west of the ballpark. I am now going to begin using the term plaza in describing this lot. Since the inception of the current project, this site has been officially referred to as the plaza. I called it the triangle lot, since this was the term used when the Tribune Company first proposed developing this property. This was name that many fans seemed to know and use. Now that everyone's attention is on this phase of the project, I figured that I should finally adopt the official designation being used. This is what the employees are now calling this area.The asphalt appears to now be complete on Sheffield Avenue. Hopefully, it will soon be completely open. Work is progressing on Waveland Avenue, so hopefully it won't be much longer for that street as well. I did mange to take a few really good photos of the plaza through some gaps in the fence.There is still an open panel on the right field video board. I was off visiting with friends in other parts of the ballpark, so I missed it when they were securing the protective netting. I did take some photos during the game, when the lights inside helped illuminate the interior.I missed the announcement when Starlin Castro entered the game as a defensive replacement at second base. The sound is just terrible in the right field bleachers. Announcements are muffled. When I was sitting in the left field corner of the grandstand last week, the sound was overpowering. I could not hold a conversation when the music was playing. I didn't realize Castro was playing until an inning after he took over at second.When Castro was coming up to his first at bat, I waited to photograph him listed on the left field video board as a second baseman. The video board control room must have been caught off guard. Castro was initially on the board with no position listed. It wasn't until after the first pitch that they put up his position.I also took a photograph of Pedro Strop's photo, on the left field video board. Strop must tilt his baseball cap in all the photos taken of him.When the game ended, there was no breeze. The W flag went up and just hung there in the still air. Too bad. I did manage to take some nice photos of the bleacher exterior after the game. With the team's current popularity, there was another long line for the remote parking lot buses. The line actually wound around the Ron Santo statue outside of Gate D.One last point I will mention is something that I saw along the first base concourse before the game. I noticed that they were experimenting with using crowd control barricades in front of the concession stands. The barricades took up half the width of the concourse. Initially, I thought that this was a bad idea. The concourse is already crowded enough. I did have one person tell me, after the game, that this arrangement worked out very well. This setup did allow traffic to move through around the customers waiting in line. I am curious to hear from those in the grandstand if this arrangement does help.

David's planning on returning either later today or tomorrow to see if Sheffield has been reopened to traffic. (Of course, it would be closed during game time and for a couple hours before and after.)

Finally, I had meant to post this photo at some point but it didn't really fit anywhere else. Now that we have some photos of Waveland nearing completion (photos 14-17 above), here's a photo I took last Thursday, August 6, when they were busy filling in a hole on Waveland. Just in case you weren't sure whether that was a hole, they put a helpful sign there (click to embiggen):