If You Build It, Will They
Come?
That's the question people are asking about the
baseball cathedrals
planned for the Yankees and Mets in New York, the first new
ballparks for the city in almost 50 years. But they're not talking
about fans; it's the business community they need.
, Illustration by Headcase Design
Most construction projects don't attract spectators. Not many
people like to spend their free hours watching the slow movement of
bulldozers, cranes, earthmovers, and cement mixers working on a
building that is years away from completion. But that's not true at
River Avenue and 162nd Street in the Bronx, where spectators dawdle
to observe the work in progress morning, noon, and night.
It's not every day that
New York City gets a new ballpark, and the
diamond emerging from this empty lot won't be just any sports
arena. It will be the new
Yankee Stadium, replacing its next-door
neighbor, a sports shrine built in 1923 that has been the showcase
for the unforgettable exploits of men named Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio,
Mantle, Jackson, and Jeter.
It is hard to overestimate what the new construction means for the
Bronx, a down-and-out borough for decades but which has in recent
years showed marked signs of resurgence. The decision of Yankees
owner
George Steinbrenner to stay in the Bronx rather than move to
a newer, greener pasture in Manhattan or
New Jersey means the Bronx
Bombers will stay put for another half century or more. City
officials and local residents believe the gargantuan investment -
estimated at $1.2 billion - will spur housing redevelopments and
the creation of jobs and retail businesses.
"Ten years from now, it's going to be beautiful here," says Lon
Wilson, a lifelong resident and racewalking coach who likes to
spend some of his free time watching the construction teams and
taking pictures of the progress. "They say in the plans that we're
going to get a new stadium, a 10-story hotel, new stores, a Target,
a new train station. We're going to have concerts again in the
neighborhood, like in the old days when I saw
James Brown and the
Isley Brothers at the stadium. The whole area will be rejuvenated.
I'm a homeowner; I should reap the benefits. If the Yankees were to
leave, the whole area would depreciate."
This scene is being repeated across town, where the New York Mets
are building a newer, better ballpark to replace Shea Stadium, a
generally unloved park that opened in 1964 next to the New York
World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens. The new stadium - now
called Citi Field - is being more closely integrated into the
cityscape than was Shea, which is isolated from city streets and
surrounded by acres of parking lots.
It has been almost 50 years since New York City got a new
major-league ballpark, and during that time, it lost both Ebbets
Field and the Polo Grounds. Now it is getting two brand-new
stadiums, both set to open in 2009 as potent symbols of the city's
impressive recovery from the economic shocks that began in 2001.
The huge construction projects, funded largely by the teams, not
the public coffers, offer city planners a rare opportunity to use
private investment to improve needy neighborhoods in the Bronx and
in Queens, boroughs that are often out of the limelight because of
the intense focus on Manhattan.
Both of the stadiums will be used as the magnets in a development
plan that is expected to bring in new businesses to neglected
parts of the city. The goal, says Joshua Laird, assistant
commissioner of planning and natural resources for the New York
City Department of Parks & Recreation, is to use the stadiums
to anchor year-round businesses so that the benefits of having a
baseball team will extend far beyond the 81 days and nights when
the teams actually play home games.
It is a tricky proposition, he says, because baseball stadiums in
local neighborhoods usually generate a huge amount of demand for
parking and other services when they are in use and then are
completely shuttered for much of the year, creating something of a
blight in urban areas when the stadium gates are closed. Both the
Yankees and Mets are looking at creating year-round stores and
restaurants within the stadiums so that there will be some use of
the facilities in the winter.
"There is always a dilemma in planning these major facilities,"
Laird says. "They have an importance to the city that goes beyond
the immediate neighborhoods. So how do you recognize that there is
a greater importance economically and prestigewise for the city
without trampling on the interests of the people who have to live
nearby and live with the stadiums day in and day out?"
Steinbrenner threatened for many years to leave the Bronx as Yankee
Stadium deteriorated, and his decision to keep the team in the
Bronx has huge implications, says Laird, who adds that the Yankees
say they are making what is probably the largest single private
investment in the history of the Bronx. Their ambitious plans call
for a new stadium to be built with a facade based on the original
1923 masterpiece, which has become one of the world's best-known
arenas.
"You're seeing people moving into the Bronx now," he says. "The
neighborhood just to the south of the stadium is growing; young
people are moving in; artists are moving in, taking on some of the
industrialized, underutilized buildings. That has happened in every
borough of the city but the Bronx; now it's the Bronx's time. I
wouldn't say it's happening because of the stadium, but it's
[connected to] it."
The existing stadium occupies a unique place in American lore. This
is where Babe Ruth hit his 60th home run, where
Lou Gehrig told a
packed crowd that he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth,
where
Joe DiMaggio hit in 56 straight games, and where Mickey
Mantle and
Reggie Jackson hit prodigious World Series home runs and
brought the Yankees more world championships. It is also a place
where Joe Louis fought, where popes have celebrated mass, where
Billy Graham preached to the multitudes, and where Nelson Mandela
spoke to a tumultuous crowd shortly after his release from a South
African prison.
The history is encapsulated in Monument Park, just past the
outfield wall - and the question for architects, city planners, and
Yankees officials is whether a new building with a similar look
built across the street can inspire the same feelings of awe and
majesty that the current stadium does. The monuments will be moved
to the new stadium, but no one knows for certain whether the magic
will come along as well.
Yankees manager
Joe Torre questions whether the new park can
capture the glory of the old. But he says the Yankees had no choice
because of the worsening condition of the existing stadium, which
was extensively (and unsympathetically) renovated in the 1970s and
is today badly out of date.
"I don't think you can just move it over," Torre says of the
existing stadium's fabled aura. "You erect a new stadium out of
necessity. This ballpark has held up, but it's in need of repair.
I'm certain that with the way they are designing stadiums today,
the people are going to really enjoy the new stadium. It will have
a touch of the inside of this stadium and a touch of the old
outside of the stadium, which to me was a classic look."
Sitting in the Yankees dugout - where so much drama has unfolded -
Torre at first says he does not mind the fact that the original
Yankee Stadium will be demolished to make way for smaller, public
playing fields when the new stadium is completed. But then he
admits that he will not be happy when the wrecking ball takes down
the old stadium. He can't even bring himself to use the word
demolish.
"I think there will always be sadness at the time when they finally
do what they're going to do to it," he says, "because you realize
who was playing on these fields. I don't think that will ever leave
you. But I think it was time to do it."
The new Yankee Stadium will have a remade version of the old 1923
facade - to give fans a reassuring link to past glories - and the
designers of the new Mets stadium have also looked to days gone by
for inspiration. The New York clubs' decisions to evoke the past
continues a trend of nostalgic, retro-style ballparks that began in
earnest with the 1992 opening of the
Baltimore Orioles' Camden
Yards.
In the Mets' case, no one would dare propose copying the
unintentionally kitschy design of Shea Stadium - a bland
1960s bowl. So planners, perhaps influenced by the Brooklyn
roots of Mets chairman Fred Wilpon, looked instead to the Brooklyn
Dodgers' Ebbets Field, which was torn down in 1960, three years
after the beloved Dodgers broke the borough's heart by departing
for
Los Angeles. The new park will not be an exact replica of the
stadium where
Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, and the
other boys of summer brought Brooklyn its only world championship
in 1955, but its facade and its rotunda intentionally pay homage to
Ebbets Field. The exterior of the new park will be made of brick,
limestone, granite, and cast stone, and the brick will be the same
color and texture as the brick that was used on the outside of
Ebbets Field. Architects hope its interior design will also capture
the intimacy of the original. Fans will be closer to the field than
they are at Shea Stadium, and a higher proportion of the seats will
be in the lowest level.
When Shea Stadium opened in 1964, its placement in a little-known
part of Queens was a perfect reflection of the way American
residential patterns were changing. It was placed near the
convergence of several highways and bridges so that fans from the
suburbs and from other boroughs could easily drive to the stadium
and park in the gigantic lot encircling it. When Yankee Stadium
opened in 1923, the majority of fans arrived on foot or via subway
trains, but by 1964, most came to ball games by car, making Shea's
location extremely practical - it was easy for motorists from
Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey to get to games.
But a ballpark surrounded by a parking lot does not generate much
romance or much interaction with its neighbors. Planners hope they
can change this dynamic. Like the Yankees in the Bronx, the Mets
hope to contribute to - and capitalize on - a general surge of
improvements in Queens. Laird, the assistant planning commissioner
for New York City's parks, says the new ballpark will be less
isolated than Shea Stadium in two important ways.
"First, the new location of the park moves it out of the center of
the parking lot, where it's an island surrounded by asphalt, and
puts it in a corner of the property where it will actually be
bordered by city streets on two sides, and that gives it a street
face, which is important," he says. "Second is the planning effort
being taken over by the city to develop the Willets Point area, on
the other side of 126th Street from the park. The notion is to have
that area for mixed use and to have the stadium across the
street."
If the plan works, the run-down auto-repair shops in Willets Point
would gradually be replaced by stores, restaurants, and other new
businesses. The presence of the Mets office, the team store, and
other year-round facilities is expected to spur investment, which
at the moment is not very advanced.
"The Mets, much to their credit, planned this retail area knowing
the market was not quite there yet," Laird says. "They'll have
their team store there, but there's not much else, not a
residential or business community there yet. The early going may be
slow, but they are anticipating the redevelopment of Willets
Point."
These far-reaching development plans for Queens and the Bronx may
falter, but the undeniable fact is that both teams have decided to
stay put rather than look for a more lucrative deal elsewhere. The
trauma of 1957, when the Dodgers and then the Giants left for
California, will not be repeated. The fabric of the city will
improve, not deteriorate. And even New Yorkers who love to find
fault are happy about that.
"It's both good and bad," says Jose Quiles, who lives near Yankee
Stadium, about the planned new stadium. "It will create more jobs,
but I guarantee you rents in the area are going to go up for people
who can barely pay. But it's a great thing for the Bronx, a great
thing for the fans. I couldn't imagine coming out here and not
seeing the Yankees. When they finally pull the stadium down, the
neighborhood is going to be sad at first. But, then, opening up a
new stadium is like opening a new chapter. The good thing is they
kept it right here in the Bronx."