You Can't Beat Having to Eat Crow at the Old Ballpark
By Mike Conklin Several years ago the White Sox used a daring formula to put together this season's highly successful baseball team. They built toward a pennant by giving younger players a chance. It paid off. If the [White] Sox had used a similarly bold approach a decade ago to build their new stadium -- for which an $8 million retrofitting has been necessitated only nine years later -- it's likely the team wouldn't be seeing pitifully small crowds this summer despite challenging for the best record in Major League Baseball.
The option was there.
In the din surrounding the 1980s effort to save old Comiskey Park, Chicago-based architect Philip Bess quietly put forward a plan that, in retrospect, would have been as good for the city and the South Side as winning a World Series. Bess advocated building a new White Sox stadium just north of old Comiskey in Armour Park. Three sides of this cozy new ballpark would be framed by fresh, multiuse buildings containing commercial, office and residential space. The old ball yard would then be turned into a public park. The baseball diamond itself would remain for recreational use, but the old stadium structure around it would be razed and the added space become tennis courts, shrubbery and a fieldhouse or library -- with part of this building possibly set aside as a White Sox museum.
Under Bess' plan, the area immediately south of old Comiskey across 35th street, where the new stadium was ultimately built -- displacing numerous residents and McCuddy's bar, a renowned [White] Sox fan hangout - would have been developed into still more business and residential space. This, in turn, would have eliminated the expensive relocation process that followed the opening of the new park and have kept a viable neighborhood intact.
Inside Bess' proposed [White] Sox stadium, which was to be named Armour Field, the emphasis was to be on intimacy. There would have been ample skyboxes and overall seating for 41,000 fans, who would have been closer to the field than in the new, mostly cookie-cutter stadiums that were then the rage. The upper deck would not have enclosed the outfield and, in a nice touch for neighbors, would have allowed views of the field from adjacent residences.
Interestingly, the [White] Sox's new plan to make the current stadium more "fan friendly" includes adding rows of seats in the outfield, plus down both baselines, that put spectators closer to the action. And the steeply angled upper deck, the subject of many a nosebleed joke, would be significantly modified -- into something approaching the civilized upper deck envisioned by Bess.
"I think adding additional bleacher seats in the zone between the fences and seats is a good thing," said Bess of the new $8 million design to upgrade Comiskey Park. "It's not going to hurt them to close or demolish the last rows of the upper deck. But nothing they can do is going to make Comiskey significantly more urban or intimate -- though if they replaced some of the adjacent parking lot with residential and retail blocks the neighborhood would become more urban. It's not going to happen."
Bess' plan was part of an "urban ballpark" concept he developed at the time. He even outlined it in a book, "City Baseball Magic: Plain Talk and Uncommon Sense about Cities and Baseball Parks." The architect's overall philosophy was and remains building baseball facilities in which stadium and neighborhood form a symbiotic relationship, much like Wrigley Field in Wrigleyville.
Of course, his design was roundly ignored by an Illinois Sports Facilities Authority determined to construct the present facility the White Sox call home. Funny thing, though. While his ideas never reached first base in Chicago, variations were adopted for the popular new stadiums that subsequently captured everyone's attention in other major league cities. "I was naive when I thought Major League Baseball would react to what I felt was a good idea at the time," Bess said, reflecting on the current White Sox situation. "New ideas aren't a high priority in baseball. The owners always seem to want to copy the last new stadium to go up, plus 10 percent."
The White Sox, of course, did just that -- using Kansas City's ballpark as a model -- and ended up with a white elephant that compares poorly with newer stadiums, such as Camden Yards in Baltimore, Jacobs Field in Cleveland and Coors Field in Denver.
Major League Baseball's own official description of what was built for Jerry Reinsdorf on the South Side goes like this: "The second Comiskey Park is quite possibly the last example of the long-evolving `modernist' baseball stadium -- curve-sided, symmetrical, suburban in character, and detached from its surroundings."
This is the polite way of saying White Sox fans got a stadium plopped down in the middle of an asphalt parking lot in the middle of the city. There is no interaction with the neighborhood, except for those who choose to park outside the lot, and hence the community has benefited little from the facility.
"The White Sox got caught building the last generic, suburban stadium," says Bess, who is the principal with Thursday Architects in Chicago and also teaches at Andrews University in Michigan. "I could see it coming." Old Comiskey Park, which opened in 1910, was the oldest ballpark in use in the big leagues before it was replaced. Since its demise, America's old baseball landmarks have been leveled one by one.
The newest bull's-eye is fixed on Fenway Park in Boston, where the Red Sox are seeking to exit their historic ballpark in 2003 and move into a proposed facility across the street. If they get their way, Wrigley Field, opened two years after Fenway in 1914, would become the national pastime's oldest venue. Nothing else is close.
Bess and another Chicago architect, Howard Decker, have each weighed in with separate innovative plans in Boston to save the old ballpark that have become a rallying point for preservationists. The designs were unveiled at a Save Fenway Park-sponsored symposium last month.
Says Bess, "We showed that either a rehabilitated or reconstructed Fenway Park where it now stands can be done for a lot less money than the plan on the table and still significantly increase the Red Sox's revenue stream." Naturally, there were no team or government officials on hand to consider alternatives to their proposal, which, at an estimated $664 million, is said to be the most expensive stadium project in history. The Red Sox, citing Fenway's decrepit state and a need for more revenue, want a new ballpark on 15.5 acres now occupied by small businesses and residences.
This time Bess, teaming with Florida architect Rolando Llanes, is behind a design calling for Fenway to undergo reconstruction over two seasons. In an unprecedented wrinkle, the ballpark's famed Green Monster wall in left field would become a backdrop for right field while the diamond is temporarily reconfigured to accommodate the work.
Decker's proposal calls for a gentler, less radical renovation to be phased in over five years. There would be no noticeable disruption for the team. Work would be done in the off-season and, as an added wrinkle, the ballpark would be designated a national landmark and the neighborhood declared a historic district to gain financial advantages as well as ensure stability.
Both plans increase the Red Sox revenue streams, which already are among the best in baseball, and require no eminent domain land grabs. Their proposals also are significantly cheaper than the team's current plan -- one that's been labeled "brain dead" by the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic Robert Campbell.
"The Cubs have proven that a ballclub can remain in the neighborhood in their own stadium and remain quite profitable," Decker says. "This should be the model for the Red Sox." And, if it isn't, Chicago again will have the oldest ballpark in baseball. This time it will be Wrigley Field instead of Comiskey Park.
Chicago Tribune Staff Writer
September 20, 2000
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