The photos above show Wrigley Field on a beautiful mid-November morning.
That’s deceptive. It was about 28 degrees when I did my Tuesday morning walkaround at the ballpark. It was cold! That’s colder even than most days last April. The average high for November 13 is 50 degrees. Suffice to say it won’t get anywhere near 50 today, nor the rest of the week, most likely.
Once again, most of the work going on was preparatory. Much of the upper deck is now shrouded and so whatever’s going on there is not visible from the street. As I’ve noted before, much of this work is for the new Catalina Club, which will go in underneath the press box, and also for making some ADA accessible seating areas in the upper deck (there were some installed in the lower deck behind both the 100 and 200 levels last year). You can see that pretty well in photo 11.
Otherwise, the holes on Sheffield and Waveland grow ever larger. It’s hard to get closeup views of these; I’ve done the best I can in photos 3, 4 and 9.
There was also a fair bit of noise coming from the park while I was walking around, presumably from further demolition work.
The ice rink that’s being set up on Gallagher Way isn’t complete yet, but you can see in photo 25 that they’ve laid down the base for it. The rink is scheduled to open Friday, November 23, the day after Thanksgiving, and you can find out more about hours, events and fees here.
Just down the street from the ballpark Tuesday, Shake Shack was having a grand opening for its new store that’s part of the Addison & Clark project. It’s located at 3519 N. Clark, and there was a line out the door, as you can see in photo 26, despite the cold weather. There were lots of neighborhood families with kids in line, along with some Cubs employees. This is likely to be a popular lunch spot for them, as well as likely being very busy on game days (it seats about 100 people). The New York-based chain has just expanded into the Chicago area over the last year or so.
Lastly, BCB reader Kevin Ellison attended the Jim Beam event last Wednesday on the field at Wrigley and sent me 12 photos, which you see in this gallery. They provide an interesting nighttime look at some of the construction. A reminder that those photos are now six days old.
We’ll have more photos here later in the week.