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The proposed 48,000-seat downtown ballpark for the St. Louis
Cardinals will give fans an intimate view of the action.
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NEW PLAYGROUNDS FOR
AN OLD GAME
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THE REGION
HAS ITS FAIR SHARE OF NOSTALGICALLY-THEMED BALLPARKS, WITH T.R.
HUGHES STADIUM IN ST. CHARLES, GMC IN SAUGET, ILL. AND THE SOON-TO-BE
BUILT BALLPARK FOR THE ST. LOUIS CARDINALS.
BY BOB SCHAPER
It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.
Earl Santee, a senior principal in the architectural design firm
of HOK (Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum) Inc., has been designing baseball
stadiums since 1986. This year, he plans to see between 30 and 40
baseball games throughout the country. The idea, he says, is to
watch the fans and the way they “use” the stadiums—which design
elements work and which ones don’t.
After completing PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Minute Maid Park in Houston
and Coors Field in Denver, among others, Santee has used his accumulated
knowledge to design the proposed 48,000-seat downtown ballpark for
the St. Louis Cardinals. “This building is really more extroverted
than Busch Stadium,” Santee says. “As a city dweller, you’re going
to know what’s going on in the ballpark every minute of the day,
because you’re going to be able to see into the ballpark from the
city.”
Santee says pedestrians walking along Clark Street (which will be
recreated where Busch Stadium now sits) and Broadway will be able
to watch “framed visions of the game. You’ll experience almost the
same experience they’ll have, except you’re outside the gate. The
building will be an absolute part of the community.”
Though many have described the nearly completed design as “retro,”
Santee rejects the characterization. “We didn’t really try for that,”
he says. “The Cardinals never said, “I want a retro or nostalgically-themed
ballpark.”
Mostly, what Santee and his team of 30-plus architects strived for
was a design that fit well within the context of downtown St. Louis.
“The ballpark is really the epitome of what urban architecture is
in St. Louis,” he says. “It takes influences from some of the major
structures in the city.”
The exterior is mostly brick and stone, which Santee says relates
well to the mainstream heritage of the city. “If St. Louis was a
bunch of glass high-rises, then you’d probably see a lot more glass
here,” Santee says. “But the history of the city is not that way.”
He says the overall approach to the new Cardinals stadium was decidedly
dissimilar to that of HOK-designed T.R. Hughes Stadium (“Home of
the River City Rascals”), located in the Ozzie Smith Sports Complex
in St. Charles County. The 2,950-seat stadium (with an additional
2,200 open berm “lawn seats”) opened in June 1999 and was built
by Clayco Construction.
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HOK
designed T.R. Hughes Stadium, “Home of the River City
Rascals” located in St. Charles. |
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“T.R. Hughes is really more thematic of the team and the team brand
than its surroundings,” Santee says. “Architecturally, it’s more
of a nostalgic-based themed building. It tries to create an ambience,
because there wasn’t much ambience to the site itself.”
Another example of that approach is GMC Stadium (“Home of the Gateway
Grizzlies”), located in Sauget, Ill. Darrell Abernathy, Vice President
of St. Louis-based Kuhlmann design Group (KdG), was the lead architect
on the project.
“You start with the programming phase,” Abernathy says. “You essentially
decide what your budget is, the type of ball field you want, seating
capacity, concession operations and the standards that you’re designing
it to.”
Like the Rascals, the Grizzlies are a non-affiliated, Frontier League
team, but Abernathy says GMC Stadium could accommodate a Major League-affiliated
AA club. “To be AA eligible you have to meet the standards and guidelines
they publish,” he says. “That includes the lighting levels out on
the field, which have to be a certain intensity. The concession
operation also has to be of a certain size, and seating capacity
is also a factor.” GMC has 2,700 seats (plus about 2,300 lawn seats),
but that number could be expanded along the third-base side.
BRUCE
HOLLAND
president, Holland Construction Services |
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Abernathy says the principal owners of the Grizzlies, St. Louis
Blues announcer Ken Wilson and Rich Sauget (who are also partners
in the Rascals), had decided in their minds what design elements
they wanted for the ballpark. “Our theme was to create a place where
people could come and have fun and be comfortable,” Abernathy recalls.
“And we wanted to pay homage to the history of baseball. It’s a
place to go and have fun.”
Bruce Holland is president of Holland Construction Services, based
in Swansea, Ill. His firm built GMC Stadium at a cost of $6.5 million,
excluding land costs.
“It was about a six or seven month process,” Holland remembers.
“We were actually two months ahead of schedule when we finished.”
Not bad, considering the original site was moved after excavation
work had already begun. “We started excavation and infrastructure
work in Collinsville, Ill.,” Holland says. “But they ran into problems,
so the project stalled. The village of Sauget was interested, and
they ended up putting the deal together.”
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GMC
Stadium, “Home of the Gateway Grizzlies,” located
in Sauget, Ill. Designed by Kuhlmann design Group.
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Eventually, GMC opened in June 2002. For Holland, building a baseball
stadium was a new experience. Most of the company’s previous work
had been on retail projects and school buildings. “It was really
fun,” he says. “The fact that it was not just a normal building
made it the kind of thing people were interested in.”
Although Kuhlmann did the design, Holland says his company provided
input during construction. “We do get involved in the process, brainstorming
with the owners and architects on how things might work better,”
he says. “There’s usually something between aesthetics, function
and budget that you have to work through.”
Abernathy says it was important to get as many seats hugging the
field as possible. “We have 10 or 11 rows of seating,” he says.
“We didn’t want 14 or 15. We’d rather spread it out around the concourse.”
Back at HOK, Santee says Cardinals fans will also get an intimate
view of the action. “Fans are going to be 50 feet closer to first
and third base on the club deck and the upper deck. They’ll also
be closer behind home plate and the outfield.”
The big difference between the new ballpark and Busch Stadium, he
says, is that Busch was built as a multi-purpose facility. “The
sightlines we’ve developed are all driven by the game of baseball,”
Santee says. “They aren’t compromised by football or soccer or anything
else. These are the best sightlines you can have.”
Bob Schaper is a freelance writer based in St. Louis.
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