We got Chicago White Sox vaportecture renderings! Rack ’em up:
Credit where credit is due: Whoever drew these up used a ton of clip art people (“entourage,” in industry lingo), and that really makes the scene at the proposed South Loop site look super lively. Also, the rendering designers sure do like terraces, don’t they? There are terraced balconies on the building across the plaza from the stadium, terraced levels in the plaza itself, terraced picnic table areas on the outside of the stadium where fans can sit and watch the plaza. They’re extra-attractive thanks to the only guard rails being glass and maybe three feet high, but what’s a little risk of falling to your death compared to unobstructed terrace views?
Also a nice touch: Working the team name vertically into the design of the stadium exterior wall, though rebranding the team as the “Chicacago White Sox” may be slightly controversial among traditional fans.
A river view this time, the better to show off the classic Chicago practice of standing up in your kayaks — or hoverkayaks, since according to their reflections they’re suspended a foot or two above the water. On the big screen, we see that Michael Kopech is still pitching for the White Sox, which is bound to disappoint diehard fans who were hoping he would be somebody else’s problem by then.
On to the stadium interior!
Glad to see future sports fans are still following in the rendering tradition of throwing your hands in the air wildly to celebrate a key game event, which here is clearly a home run given that the center field fireworks are going off, while on the field … the batter is still in the batter’s box, but is also approaching first base, while another runner rounds second and a fourth stands watching from the cutout near third. Enough with the rule changes, Rob Manfred!
As for the stadium design itself, it can best be described as “terracey,” with a whole lot of levels, incorporating the current White Sox stadium’s least-loved feature, the glass-walled luxury suites that force the upper decks into the stratosphere. We’re not getting back the old, fan-friendly Comiskey Park cheap seats anytime soon, it looks like.
But what about the economic impact of all this, you ask? Could there possibly be renderings of that?
Those sure are some big numbers! Even the typeface is big! Would be nice if we got to see how they were calculated — maybe that’s included somewhere in the spiral-bound booklet this appears to be a page from — but it is considerate that they at least included the footnote detailing that this is only what will happen if the entire development is built out, which may or may not ever happen.
And finally, let’s check in on the site of the White Sox’ existing stadium:
It’s a soccer stadium! Or, well, part of a baseball stadium with part of a soccer stadium grafted on. There’s not really much reason to keep part of the old stadium around for soccer — the seats in one end zone would point in the wrong direction, and nobody needs those glass-walled suites — but I suppose it lets people pretend this is ecologically sound reuse, just put it in the PDF, you can always redesign it later.
All this, Chicago, can be yours, for only around $1.7 billion in public money! Kayaks sold separately.
Most of the crowd seems quite at peace with whatever the heck’s occurring on the field … unlike the ritualistic dance in Sox dugout.
All it needs is Rooftop Bleachers on the high-rises
Sounds good to me.
Portland converted their old AAA to a soccer stadium. I do wonder with the different fields what that means. RFK was used for soccer but they had a swinging stand that made the field rectangular for soccer (and football) while diamond shaped for baseball.
The Portland stadium was used for minor-league baseball before soccer, but it was originally built as multisport, mostly for college football. So even in its baseball configuration, the grandstand wasn’t really baseball-shaped: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Multnomah_Stadium%2C_1956.jpeg/1920px-Multnomah_Stadium%2C_1956.jpeg
I never realized how much the stadium changed over the years. Wild!
Don’t worry about wasting the old stadium, we can just use it for a different sport! Why not just keep using it for baseball if it’s good enough for soccer? I guess a baseball stadium that’s good enough for soccer is not nearly good enough for baseball.
Despite what the marketing department of Related Midwest would have you believe, this land lies in the Near South Side community area. The population has grown from 9,600 in 2000 to 28,800 in 2020. The Cook County Assessor can easily provide property tax revenue numbers for 40 acres to see if the tax revenue estimate is correct.
It’s in a TIF district, the annual property tax revenue will be $0. Presumably the $200m is income taxes, sales taxes, which are harder to project. (Harder to project accurately, I mean; they’re easy to project if you say “Uh, $200m?” and just print that.
It will generate $0 in property tax revenue because it will be owned by the state or the city. The residences will still pay property tax, even if it is located in a TIF district.
An article in the Chicago Sun-Times says there will be 5,000 residences. How much property tax is charged to 5,000 nearby residences? That is easily obtained data for the assessor to provide.
If every unit has 2 wage earners at the area median income of $115,993, $57.4 million will be generated in state income tax.
It is easy to calculate sales tax in the ballpark because there is currently a White Sox ballpark that generates sales tax. It isn’t a lot, because if it was a lot, the number would be publicized to justify the new stadium.
Of course, “new” money generated will be far less, because there won’t be 10,000 new $116k earners moving from out of state, and most people buying stuff at the new stadium will have bought it at the current stadium.
It is also possible they wrote $200M because they intend the M to be a Roman numeral representing 1,000 and not 1,000,000.
Tear down the old one and build a proper soccer stadium.
They can use Seat Geek Stadium as inspiration. It is the Fire’s previous stadium 15 miles away.
How realistic is it to build a baseball stadium with zero visible parking spaces for cars?
Wrigley Field would like a word.
Interestingly on Chicago twitter the parking issue has been coming up a lot.
True, but Wrigley was also built in 1916. Sorry, but I gave up on Twitter, so I am not familiar with what people are posting.
1914, actually, for the Whales.
So what? There used to be a lot of parking lots around Wrigley. And the original Comensky Park was built before Wrigley. Lots of parking lots there.
Most of the parking lots around Wrigley have been converted to the hotel, apartments, and the Gallagher Way plaza with the adjacent Team Store, Team offices and sports bar. Wrigleyville was nice before but the upgrades made over the last decade have generally been a great improvement
The area around GRF can be upgraded by developing the parking lots. Build townhouses and apartment buildings with some bars and restaurants and it could be a vibrant hub on the South Side.
Once Jerry Reinsdorf gets invisible parking spaces, all the other owners will want them too.
All stadiums should have invisible parking.
…maybe they already do?
What I find annoying about this as a Chicago taxpayer is that the Sox could have had what they want years ago.
They want Wrigleyville. And I get that it took time for it to development but as the lat 10 years have shown, you can get a lot by getting rid of parking lots. Wrigleyville is fun on game days but it is fun other days too. The stadium acts as a back drop.
They could have gone with the Armour Square proposal. The Sox could have developed those parking lots around the stadium but didn’t.
And as a Chicago taxpayer I am getting shafted rigjt?
I suspect what Reinsdorf is less Wrigleyville than the $1.7 billion. Or rather: He only wants Wrigleyville if someone else will pay to build it.
I wish Chicago would start bulldozing the downtown parking garages/lots and replacing them with apartment buildings. If we are spending 100s of millions of dollars to convert office space into apartments because “no one is going to the office anymore”, why do we need all of those 8 story parking garages?
People drive from all over to get a sandwich at Mr Beef!
If the White Sox somehow pull this off. The current stadium sight would be much better for the Bears. Far easier highway and public transit access than Soldier Field. Ever since they moved Lake Shore Drive and created the Museum Campus, the Bears heaven’t really fit in. Their games are a huge disruption normal museum/aquarium/planetarium business.
Baffling that they wouldn’t position the stadium to allow for the potential of home runs to fly into the River…but then with the monstrosity that is the current stadium, maybe not so surprising that they stupidly neglect to think of that in this potential location.
It would be better for the downtown skyline to be visible than to have balls land in the river. Cardinals, Pirates, and Tigers games are better looks than the Reds. The Giants had the boost from Barry Bonds.
Also, the sun sets in the west, and baseball games are often played at dusk. The last stadium to have a home plate facing west had to have “sun delays” to wait for the big glowy thing to get out of the way.
Wow Neil, you weren’t kidding when you said put Chicago (actually you said Bears-same difference) and the comments go way up!
Ugh, too much foul ground behind home plate! Why do they always do that? Puts the seats farther away…..
Because a bigger circle means more first (and every…) row seats?
Nah, it couldn’t be because of money could it? A sports franchise owner would never stoop so low as to compromise the game experience for money…
Most new MLB stadiums actually feature very little foul ground behind home plate. (Also because of money, since it maximizes the number of seats near the plate they can sell for top price.)
If anything, that apparent foul ground in the renderings appears to be the result of the illustrators not knowing how angles work — look at the shape of the grandstand compared to the (right angle) foul lines.
Chicago is now so tall that it requires extra characters to adequately represent its grand stature when typed in a verticacal orientation.
Hmm. One second thought, this really should have read…
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Cheers!
I was hoping the giant screen in left field had been deliberately oriented away from the stadium to spare the fans from having to watch the White Sox play (or at least replays)…
but no, Reinsdorf has cruelly made it a double sided video board.
Does this mean people driving by (even on buses) will need to pay an RSN rights fee to Marquee (or whatever multi tiered service the Sox are playing on by the time this catastrophe for Chicago tax payers actually opens)?