April 25, 2008
Dodger Stadium to get $500m "necklace"
So much for the economic downturn making sports team owners shy of starting new construction projects. Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt announced yesterday plans for a $500 million expansion of Dodger Stadium, to be completed in time for the ballpark's 50th anniversary in 2012. Dubbed the "Next 50 Plan" - as in, keeping the stadium around for another 50 years - it wouldn't actually change the existing structure, but rather would build out new facilities into the existing parking lot, including a promenade filled with shops and restaurants, and a "green necklace" of landscaped walkways.
The idea here, obviously, is to do what the Boston Red Sox have done with Fenway Park: Add new ways to separate fans from their wallets without building a whole new stadium. The question is whether the Dodgers can sell enough tacos and Clayton Kershaw souvenir jerseys to pay off $500 million in construction debt. As L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne writes:
The additions are all connected to a single goal: to extend the amount of time a typical visitor spends at the stadium. McCourt wants Dodger fans to arrive at the park earlier, to stay later and maybe even to drop by on days when no game is scheduled.
The success of the plan, then, won't be hard to gauge. If there are scores of Angelenos milling around the stadium grounds on, say, a Saturday afternoon in January 2013, snapping up foam fingers and Russell Martin jerseys, then McCourt's ideas for updating the landmark will look prescient. If Dodger fans bolster their reputation for showing up in the third inning and beginning the walk to their cars in the eighth -- and not even thinking about the stadium during the winter months -- we'll be justified in wondering whether that $500 million was worth it.
Also in question is whether McCourt will ask for any public spending as part of the project - while he's said the expansion itself will be paid for privately, he also said he hoped the city would "tweak and adjust subway lines" to add a stop at the stadium and provide "bus access in the interim." Deadpans the Times: "It remains unclear who would pay for such transit."
April 23, 2008
Detroit puts price on Tiger Stadium's head
The Detroit Tigers left Tiger Stadium almost nine years ago, and it seems like the city has been about to tear it down ever since. Now, though, the day of reckoning has apparently been set: Detroit's Economic Development Corp., awarded a contract yesterday to tear down the historic ballpark, starting in May or June, to make way for a vacant lot.
The group pushing to preserve at least part of the stadium, meanwhile, has been given an ultimatum: Come up with $369,000 by June 1 - $300,000 to make up for the fee the demolition company will pay if it's allowed by then to knock down the whole building in one shot, the rest to cover six months of security and maintenance on the remaining fragment - and the city will consider saving the home-plate section. Otherwise, the whole building comes down.
"Right now, this deal costs the city no money. If we wait, we lose out on $300,000," EDC VP Wayne Guillebeaux told the Detroit News. "Do you think the city intends to lose out on $300,000?" Would that be the same city that collected $2 million in ticket taxes to pay the cost of demolishing the stadium and then gave it to the Tigers instead?
Seattle to NBA: Give us new team, we'll give you Sonics
Looks like two can play the blackmail game: Former U.S. senator Slade Gorton, who is representing the city of Seattle in its lawsuit to hold the owners of the Seattle Sonics to their lease through 2010, said Monday that he'd consider settling the suit if a new team was part of the bargain:
"If a replacement team is part of the package, of course we'd talk. My goal from the very beginning has been to have a team. Revenge, I'm not interested in as such. The city has a financial stake in all this. The mayor and I are in complete accord that what we want is a team."
It's an interesting gambit - the NBA certainly doesn't want to face two lame-duck seasons in Seattle, and Sonics owner Clay Bennett is likely to push the league to do whatever it can to let him move the franchise to his hometown of Oklahoma City ASAP. While NBA commissioner David Stern said last year that Seattle wasn't getting a new team if it lost this one, Bennett said last week that the team name and records should stay in Seattle, leaving open the possibility of a Cleveland Browns scenario.
The question then becomes what price Seattle would have to pay to get a new franchise, beyond settling the lawsuit. Both Cleveland with the Browns and Charlotte with the Bobcats had to build all-new buildings in order to be awarded new teams; it seems likely that Stern would at the very least hold out for a publicly funded (or somebody-other-than-team-funded, anyway) major renovation of KeyArena as a condition of a new franchise. (While it would arguably make sense for, say, the New Orleans Hornets to jump at the chance to move to a bigger market, that's not generally how things work under sports cartels.) So that'd leave us back where we started: The NBA demanding a new arena, and Seattle voters and politicians saying they're not going to be the ones to pay for one. The Sonics may leave, but the arena battle looks destined to live on without them.
April 19, 2008
Sonics move: Pinning the blame
In its day-after coverage of the NBA's approval of the Seattle Sonics' proposed move to Oklahoma City, ESpn included the following:
The only thing keeping the moving trucks from pulling up and emptying the Sonics' offices is an arena lease, which Stern has called the worst in the league. (The Sonics receive zero revenue from parking, just 40 percent of revenue from suite sales and concessions, and just 60 percent of the revenue from a large swath of thousands of $105 seats in the lower bowl.)
This is the real explanation for why the NBA is set to trade the nation's 14th media market for its 45th, despite Seattle having an arena that was just renovated 14 years ago. It's not the arena, it's the lease.
So, how bad is that lease? Certainly, having to hand over half or more the revenue from suites, seats, and concessions sounds pretty tough - why should the city of Seattle be getting the money when people go to Sonics games? The answer, though, is that that's what the Sonics agreed to, in order to get KeyArena renovated in the '90s: The city would get to keep a large chunk of arena revenues to pay back its $74 million share of renovation costs.
There are several lessons here:
- Teams want new arenas, but not if they have to pay for them.
- If, in fact, the Sonics really can't make money with this lease, then it's unlikely any arena can pay off its own costs and still turn a profit for the team that plays there. ($74 million is a piddly amount in arena construction/renovation terms.)
- If a team owner promises that if you build him a new arena you'll get all your money back eventually, keep one hand on your wallet.
April 18, 2008
NBA to Sonics: Pack your bags
It's official: The NBA owners voted 28-2 today to approve the relocation of the Seattle Sonics to Oklahoma City. The two dissenters: Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who'd previously said he thought it was dumb for the NBA to give up a bigger market for a more lucrative arena deal, and Portland Trailblazers owner Paul Allen, who is also owner of the Seattle Seahawks and would be run out of town on a rail if he voted yes.
The only obstacle now to the move is the pair of lawsuits facing the Sonics, one from the city of Seattle trying to hold them to their lease through 2010 (the case goes to trial beginning in June), and one from former owner Howard Schultz trying to nullify his sale of the team on the grounds that the new owners failed to live up to an agreement to negotiate in good faith to keep the team in town. Given that you can count on one finger the number of teams that have had relocations blocked by court injunction - I'm tempted to say less than one finger, but I might be forgetting somebody - the odds on the Sonics staying put look bleak.
Leaving nothing to chance, meanwhile, the Oklahoma legislature passed a bill on Thursday absolving the relocated Sonics from paying payroll taxes for the nexf 15 years, an estimated value of $60 million. The Oklahoma Legislature sweetened the pot for the NBA on Thursday, approving a payroll-tax rebate for the Sonics worth an estimated $60 million over 15 years. The state House approved the measure 67-32 and sent it to Gov. Brad Henry, who swiftly signed it into law. Add in the $121 million the city is spending on upgrading the Ford Center, and the $89 million cost of originally building the arena just five years ago, and ... well, you can see why the Sonics owners, at least, don't seem to care much about Cuban's arguments about market size.
So congratulations, people of Oklahoma City: You just bought yourself one used NBA franchise. With any luck, it'll be a few years before some other city tries to steal it out from under you in turn.
Developer pitches NFL stadium east of L.A.
Los Angeles developer Ed Roski officially announced plans to build a 75,000-seat football stadium in the City of Industry, a small town east of Los Angeles heretofore best known as the place where Michael J. Fox revved up his DeLorean in "Back to the Future." Roski said he hoped the $800 million stadium, to be surrounded - stop me if you've heard this before - by shops and restaurants, would be enough to lure an NFL team to the L.A. area. (In fact, he won't begin construction until a team is in place, a reasonable requirement that some cities could have learned from.)
And how exactly does Roski plan pay for this? He didn't exactly say, beyond indicating that the surrounding development would somehow offset the stadium cost. (Again, stop me if you've heard this.) One method he won't be using is tax increment financing: A plan to redirect property taxes from the L.A. County treasury to pay for redevelopment in the City of Industry was killed by the state legislature on Wednesday, after county supervisors screamed bloody murder. Reports the L.A. Times:
A spokesman for Roski said the site of the proposed NFL stadium is not within a redevelopment project area, and there is no plan to ask for public funds for the project.
That the bill is being supported at the same time the NFL stadium is being proposed is "coincidental in timing and unrelated in purpose," said John Semcken, a vice president of Roski's Majestic Realty.
The Times did not report on whether Semcken was able to keep a straight face.
April 16, 2008
Schultz: Gimme the Sonics back
I know I've been saying that anything can happen as the NBA nears a vote on the Seattle Sonics' proposed move to Oklahoma City, but I still didn't expect this: Former Sonics owner (and Starbucks CEO) Howard Schultz has announced that he's suing to reverse his 2006 sale of the team to a group of Oklahoma businessmen, on the grounds that they lied when they promised to make a good-faith effort to keep the team in town. Schultz' lawyer Richard Yarmuth told the Seattle Times:
"The theory of the suit is that when the team was sold, the Basketball Club of Seattle, our team here, relied on promises made by Clay Bennett and his ownership that they desired to keep the team in Seattle and intended to make a good-faith effort to accomplish that."
While a former owner suing to rescind a two-year-old sale seems - what's the legal term? - insane, Bennett and Co. apparently did sign a side letter to their purchase agreement promising to honor the team's lease through 2010 and to use their best efforts to work out a new arena deal in Seattle, neither of which, it's now clear, they've done. Though it's always possible Schultz' move is more a p.r. gesture to try to get people drinking his coffee again, it could make for an even more interesting NBA owners' vote on Friday.
Wolff, San Jose agree on soccer stadium terms
San Jose Earthquakes owner Lew Wolff has reached an agreement with city officials to buy 66 acres of city land, at a cost of $132 million, to serve as the site of a new 18,000 soccer stadium that Wolff would build himself.
If this sounds like a breath of fresh air in the stadium world - not only does the team owner pay construction costs, he even pays for the land he's using! - be sure to read the fine print:
The real estate magnate is counting on the city to rezone 78 acres of commercial and industrial property he owns in Edenvale to allow developers to build as many as 1,500 townhomes there. Wolff plans to pay for the soccer stadium with the profit from selling the Edenvale property as residential land.
This is, you'll recall, the same scheme - call it a "rezoning subsidy" - that Wolff is proposing to Fremont for a stadium for his Oakland A's (inasmuch as he's proposing anything specific at all). Not to mention similar to what was floated in Sacramento for the Kings a while back. California is quickly gaining a reputation as one of the toughest states to get public stadium funding out of, both because of a skeptical electorate and strong voter-referendum requirements; instead, team owners are being forced to look for other ways to build stadiums without, you know, spending any of their own money. Because that would be crazy talk.
Giants buy back stadium bonds
So much for that stadium debt crisis blowing over quickly: Two weeks after it was revealed that some of the New York Giants' stadium bonds had hit 22% in interest rates, the team announced yesterday it was redeeming $100 million worth of auction-rate stadium bonds to get out from under the crushing interest payments. That's not a sign of an organization that expects the bond market to return to normal anytime soon.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, meanwhile, has cited the increased stadium bonds as one reason why league owners will likely vote to opt out of their labor agreement this fall, likely precipitating a player strike. Why the players should have to pay the price for the owners' risky borrowing schemes he didn't make clear - though if the Giants' owners are turning to Jeremy Shockey for financial advice, that would explain a lot.
April 14, 2008
Nets project to cost $2B in subsidies?
The New York Post has a new estimate for the ever-changing subsidy figure for New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner's planned Atlantic Yards development, and it's a doozy: $2.157 billion. (A detailed breakdown is here.) That's $38 million higher than the $2.119 billion estimate by project opponents Develop Don't Destroy, and a crazy amount higher than the official $305 million figure (which only includes direct subsidies, not tax breaks). It's also about half the cost of the entire project, though as Atlantic Yards Report notes, that cost is now more like $4.3 billion than the $4 billion cited by the Post.
How real are these numbers? Hard to say - it's unclear whether the expert the Post consulted, urban planner Michael D.D. White, used present-value figures (I'm guessing not, especially for the $1 billon-plus he estimates in property tax savings), and some of the subsidies included are what's known as "as-of-right," i.e., anybody building a similar project would get them. What does seem clear, though, is that the total subsidies for the project will run into the billions - that is, if it ever gets built, given that Ratner has begun backing away from commitments to build anything other than the arena.
New York state assemblymember Richard Brodsky, who controls oversight of the state authorities that are overseeing the project, warned the Post that "the notion the taxpayers are going to invest money while the developers don't meet their commitments, if that's what people expect, there is going to be a fight about it." Ooh, a fight - Brodsky does those well.
April 13, 2008
Sonics owners bankrolled OKC arena campaign
This should surprise exactly no one who's followed stadium campaigns in the slightest: The owners of the Seattle Sonics turn out to have funded nearly half of the campaign in favor of a sales tax hike to renovate the Ford Center for the franchise. Of the $843,007 spent by the pro-tax forces, $385,000 came from the Sonics owners; another $268,000 came from the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce.
The real question now is how much money the anti forces spent, and whether this referendum conforms to the rule that you have to outspend the opposition by at least 30-to-1 to win a sports subsidy vote. The Oklahoman doesn't say; if any FoS readers know where to find the campaign donation records, drop a line.
On the radio
If you weren't listening to Sirius channel 122 last Friday night at 1:20 am Eastern time, you missed my appearance on Sports Byline USA's show "Sports Overnight America," talking about the book some, but mostly about the Seattle Sonics' seemingly impending move to Oklahoma City. You can listen for yourself here.
And if you'd like to hear another interview I did on Sports Byline USA last month, that's here. (Thanks to Sports Byline USA's web stream and to Audio Hijack for making these possible.)
April 11, 2008
FL house proposes one-year cut to sports subsidies
The Florida state house, facing massive state deficits, has passed a budget that would eliminate for this year the $2 million in annual sales-tax kickbacks that all pro sports teams in the state receive, saving the state $20 million. Before you get too excited, though, the measure still has to be resolved in conference with the state senate, which passed its own budget with the tax subsidies intact; Orlando city officials, meanwhile, are charging that it could end up in default of its arena bonds for the Magic if the measure were approved. (It actually seems far more likely that the city would be forced to ante up the difference, but if you're the mayor of Orlando, would you mention that?)
House leaders admitted the legislation was "a symbolic gesture" and that it hadn't been vetted to determine how it would affect stadium debt obligations. Team lobbyists, meanwhile, threatened to sue if it were put into effect, presumably under the Supreme Court's "no backsies" precedent. Don't hold your breath waiting for this to become law.
Sonics owners e-mails show move was goal all along
You'd think by now public figures would have learned the lesson: Don't say one thing and text another. Yesterday it was revealed that Seattle city attorneys had uncovered e-mails sent between owners of the Sonics last April expressing enthusiasm about moving the team to Oklahoma City at the same time that they were insisting they had no such plans. "I am a man possessed! Will do everything we can," wrote lead owner Clay Bennett, to which his co-owner Tom Ward replied, "That's the spirit!! I am willing to help any way I can to watch ball here [in Oklahoma City] next year."
Whether this will affect the city's lawsuit to hold the Sonics to their lease through 2010 isn't clear, as that seems to hinge more on the issue whether monetary compensation can be assigned to the loss of a sports franchise. There's a slim chance, however, that it could play into next week's NBA owners' vote on approving the team's relocation to Oklahoma City - especially considering that NBA commissioner David Stern, who has insisted that team owners at least go through the motions of seeking local arena solutions before bolting to new towns, fined McClendon $250,000 for telling a newspaper last summer that the ownership group bought the team in order to move it. (The owners had signed an agreement with Stern to negotiate in good faith through October to remain in Seattle.) Not to mention that Bennett e-mailed Stern after that incident, "As absolutely remarkable as it may seem, Aubrey and I have NEVER discussed moving the Sonics to Oklahoma City, nor have I discussed it with ANY other member of our ownership group."
As any spam filter could tell you, never trust people who type in ALL CAPS.
April 09, 2008
Sonics reno plan dead - for now
Sure enough, it wasn't a last-minute deal: Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' announcement yesterday was that a proposed $300 million renovation of KeyArena for the Sonics - half to be paid for by a group of local billionaires, half by taxpayers - was dead, with not enough time to get public funding through the state legislature before the rich dudes' self-imposed April 10 deadline.
That said, it's not necessarily the kind of dead you don't recover from: Seattle developer Matt Griffin, part of the plutocrats' group, said "we'd be irresponsible to say we wouldn't keep an open mind" on future arena talks. It does mean there won't be a deal in place before the NBA owners vote next week on relocating the Sonics to Oklahoma City; even that, though, isn't necessarily a death knell for the team, as there's still that city lawsuit trying to hold the team to its lease through 2010. City officials say they're not looking for a buyout settlement (they rejected a $26.5 million offer in February), so if they manage to drag things out in court, that could at least buy some time for an arena deal to be worked out.
Whether that's a good thing or not depends not just on whether you think it's worth spending $150 million to renovate an arena that the city just spent $74 million to renovate in 1994, but on who would reap any increased revenues from a renovated arena: the Sonics, the private investors, or the public. While the split of costs has been a matter of intense public debate, there's been almost no discussion of the split of revenues - beyond a brief mention that the city would recoup its $75 million share from "revenues generated" at the arena, would could mean anything, from actual money from naming rights or ad boards, say, to dubious pay-your-taxes-and-eat-them-too schemes like TIFs. If I've said it before, Judith Grant Long has said it a thousand times: You can't evaluate a stadium or arena deal until you've gotten a look at the lease.
April 08, 2008
Sonics arena plans: One down, one to go?
Today could be D-Day for talks of renovating KeyArena to keep the Seattle Sonics in town. Yesterday, a spokesperson for the group of local billionaires offering to pay half the cost of the $300 million project (with an April 10 deadline for their offer) declared the plan all but dead; meanwhile, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced he'd hold a press conference this morning to discuss the plan's fate. Unless the billionaire group's announcement was a ploy to get Nickels off the dime (I swear I did not have that pun in mind when I started typing it), it's a fair bet that the mayor's announcement will be that the last best hope for spending public money to appease the Sonics has failed.
There is still one other arena plan out there: the one announced last week by ex-Sonics star Freddie Brown and WongDoody Communications director Dave Bean to build a $1 billion retractable-roofed downtown arena to host expansion NBA or NHL teams, using entirely private funds. Given that 1) this would be the most expensive arena project in history; 2) the second-most expensive arena project in history, Brooklyn's proposed Atlantic Yards Nets arena, is already getting several hundred million dollars in subsidies, and its developers claim it can't be viable without more; and 3) this is Seattle, which while no Oklahoma City, isn't likely to bring in a $20 million a year naming-rights deal, it seems likely this plan will go down in history with other phantom sports projects of years past.
Not that that makes it any less fun to say "WongDoody." And maybe that's all Bean is after - it's all about mind share, after all.
April 07, 2008
Ratner: We want more arena subsidies
It's been hard to put a precise number on New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner's planned Brooklyn arena project, thanks to the confusing list of tax breaks and such the project is slated to get, and the fact that it's hard to say what money is going toward the arena and what the other parts of the Atlantic Yards project that may now never get built. Thanks to a report this morning by Atlantic Yards Report's inveterate blogger Norman Oder, though, we can put an adjective on the subsidies - "more":
"We still need more" subsidies, Chuck Ratner, president of parent Forest City Enterprises (FCE) told investment analysts in a conference call last Wednesday. It confirms the clue, as noted in the most recent 10-K filing, that the developer seeks more public support before proceeding with the project.
Chuck Ratner's full quote, according to the official transcript:
Just in these past six or eight months, we got the various governmental agencies, state, city, bureau in New York to increase their commitments to Atlantic Yards by $105 million on top of the $200 they had committed. We still need more.
As Oder notes in a phone conversation with FoS, the $305 million Ratner mentions is all direct cash outlays, implying that the Ratners are seeking more up-front money, not tax breaks for affordable housing or the like. Given that the rest of the project is on the brink of collapse and the arena cost is up to a staggering $950 million, it wouldn't be exactly surprising. Stay tuned for further developments.
April 05, 2008
Rose-colored glasses day at Comerica Park
Crain's Detroit Business has a story this week about the impact of the Detroit Tigers on the local economy, and if you were hoping for a hard-hitting analysis of economic benefit claims, you 1) don't realize how ga-ga news writers go when sports is involved, 2) haven't been following how economic impact claims seldom get close examination from the news media, even those specializing in economics, and 3) didn't notice that the story ran in a Crain's section titled "The Bright Side," helpfully described as "a collection of stories and videos that address the positive side of business in [Southeast Michigan]."
The Crain's story looks at two new reports projecting the Tigers' impact on the local economy, one from the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce (which counts Tigers heir Christopher Ilitch on its board of directors), and one from the Anderson Economic Group (which Crain's billed as an "exclusive," but which you can find on Anderson's website here.) [UPDATE: Crain's writer Bill Shea informs me that the report was initially a Crain's exclusive, but was subsequently posted to the Anderson site.] The Tigers' increased attendance in recent years, writes Crain's, are "good for business ... to the tune of about $117 million to $277 million," according to the Anderson and Chamber reports, respectively.
Well, no. Those figures actually represent the estimated economic activity generated by Tigers games: in other words, all the money spent on tickets, food, or other related items (hotel rooms, effigies of Dontrelle Willis, etc.). That's "good for business" if you're the team's owner, certainly, but isn't going to do much for you if you run an auto repair store on the other side of town. (Unless Dontrelle Willis stops by to have a slashed tire repaired.)
Moreover, as economists are always pointing out, sports teams can actually be bad for other businesses if they siphon off spending that would otherwise be going elsewhere - as video rental stores found out during the last baseball strike, when their business suddenly soared. The name economists give this is the "substitution effect," and the Anderson study, at least, attempts to account for it, by assuming that 50% of all spending at Tigers games would take place anyway if the team didn't exist. (Crain's doesn't reveal whether the Chamber report included any substitution adjustment.) That's still a remarkably high figure, though, given that the reports were looking at economic activity in all three counties of the Detroit metro area - unless you assume that half of Tigers ticket buyers are Canadians swarming across the river to take advantage of the exchange rate, or that most Detroiters would be sitting at home reading the mayor's steamy text messages instead of spending money if not for baseball.
So what this story boils down to is: If a lot of people go to Detroit Tigers games, they'll spend a lot of money there, and Mike Ilitch will make a lot of money. And he's a Detroit businessman, so that's good news! See how much easier journalism is when you look on the bright side?
April 04, 2008
Stop me if you've heard this: MSG reno plan announced
One week after announcing a $350 million renovation plan for Madison Square Garden, New York Knicks and Rangers owners Cablevision announced it again, this time with renderings and a $500 million price tag. Unfortunately, almost all of the press coverage has featured the same two renderings (of a corridor and another corridor), which doesn't explain much about what the renovations will entail.
You can sneak a few more peeks in this report on cable news channel NY1, which gives more details on the fate of the arena's "blue seats" that have been the traditional home of cheap-seat diehards (and which haven't been blue for nearly two decades). The grade of the top level would be increased by 17%, according to Cablevision, enabling the seats to be closer to the floor - this may sound confusing if you equate "steep" with "high," but actually steeper seats can be closer to the action horizontally, since fans in the back rows don't have to worry about their views being blocked by those in rows ahead of them. That would presumably enable MSG to reclaim some of what's now dead airspace inside the arena and turn it into extra concession and corridor space behind the seating - though it's hard to tell exactly from one grainy rendering via web video. (It's also worth noting that luxury boxes would be moved down from their current perch atop the arena to lower down, presumably displacing more regular seating to higher altitudes.)
The bigger question is whether Cablevision can really expect to make back its $500 million just from having a few more restaurants and nicer suites; consider that they'd need to clear at least $40 million a year in new revenues every year, plummeting economy or no. The company does say it would do the work entirely with its own money, though, and since most local politicians are enraged at Cablevision for backing out of the plan to move them to a new arena across the street, they're not likely to get any from the public anyway. So New Yorkers should at least be able to rest easy that if they end up paying more at the box office for seats in a renovated Garden, they won't have to be paying again on tax day.
April 01, 2008
Take me out to the mall game
The new Washington Nationals stadium - called, eponymously enough, Nationals Park, though a corporate naming-rights deal is no doubt inevitable, leaves a lot to be desired, according to Washington Post architecture critic Philip Kennicott, noting that concessions stands and bathrooms block most of the external views. But that's to be expected, writes Kennicott, given that it's less a building than "a machine for baseball and for sucking the money out of the pockets of people who like baseball":
The ballpark -- like most shopping malls, airports, sports facilities and, alas, many new museums -- belongs to what we might call the architecture of distraction. We don't tend to think of these buildings in architectural terms, as having form or line, balance or symmetry, shape or presence. Rather, it's all about program, circulation and keeping boredom at bay. The public judges these structures in terms of their amenities, their bathrooms, their cleanliness and their overall convenience.
So it was no surprise to stand in the crowd, at an exhibition game Saturday evening, and hear several variations on this verdict: "It's a much better experience than RFK." The old and much-maligned RFK Stadium, where the Nationals played the past three seasons, might be a better building -- more visual interest, more presence on its prominent site, and a better mix of modern style with the city's vernacular gravitas -- but it was a lousy experience. Today, we have a great experience but, alas, a lousy building.
Having only caught a few glimpses of Nationals Park on the season-opening telecast, I'm inclined to say it doesn't look like a great experience, either, if by experience you mean watching the ballgame and not buying nachos. All decks but the lowest are set very far back from the field, and have a notable curve to them as well - which is good for having all seats point toward the infield, but not so good for having them all be in the same zip code as the infield. RFK Stadium was no beauty, but it did have outstanding views from the upper deck. I'd be interested in hearing reports from D.C. fans on how the cheap seats in the new place match up.
