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• Future Washington D.C. Ballpark news •
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Ballpark will be 'iconic'
Architects to Oversee Timetable and Budget for Construction
By Eric Fisher
THE WASHINGTON TIMES - April 1, 2005
The Kansas City-based firm, working in joint partnership with the District architecture firm Devrouax & Purnell, is still months away from a final design. But already being considered are several dramatic ideas for the waterfront ballpark, including a heavy use of glass in the exterior of the stadium, and finding some way to have the facility thematically tie into the original street grid of Washington laid out by Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant. Previously discussed ideas include a substantial use of stone with the exterior glass.
"Nothing is really in or out at this point," said Joseph Spear, HOK Sport senior principal. "But a lot of times we get typecast, and this is a real chance to break out of that. Ballparks are something you really do get emotional about, which is a big part of why we're attracted to doing these projects."
Many of HOK's recent ballparks have featured a similar motif based on an extensive use of brick and steel, though its portfolio of European and Asian sports facilities shows more risk-taking and unusual designs.
"What we're after is a stadium that is both contemporary yet timeless," said Marshall Purnell, principal with Devrouax & Purnell.
Spear and Purnell will combine to lead the joint venture and the overall stadium design.
The HOK/Devrouax & Purnell joint bid, as expected, received unanimous approval from the D.C. Sports & Entertainment Commission. The team submitted a bid of $18.6 million to design the stadium, the lowest of three finalists by nearly $4 million.
Allen Y. Lew, sports commission chief executive officer, confirmed what had been the worst-kept secret within the architecture and design communities: The HOK/Devrouax & Purnell bid was "the front-runner almost from the time of inception."
"They are simply the most qualified team to take on this challenge," Lew said. "There's no question they bring to the table an extremely impressive portfolio."
HOK has served as the lead architect for 10 of the last 14 stadiums in Major League Baseball to be built, including Oriole Park at Camden Yards and San Francisco's SBC Park.
Despite those credentials, Lew said he is considering the creation of a peer advisory panel comprised of other architecture and design professionals to help HOK and Devrouax & Purnell with its work. While Spear said he had not worked within such a structure before, he offered no objections to the additional oversight.
The sports commission also is planning to have some type of public advisory process to allow for citizen input into the design, though details have yet to be solidified.
The ballpark is due to open for the 2008 season, and the tight timetable to design and construct the stadium became an advantage for HOK because no other competing firm for the District job came close to matching its resume.
Stadium May Depart From Orioles Model as Innovation Encouraged
By David Nakamura
Washington Post - February 6, 2005
The rendering, which was by no means final, was intended to stir emotions, to offer a glimpse of the unusual design possibilities for the future home of the Washington Nationals. When the stadium is completed in 2008, officials say, it could become a city gateway that reinvigorates a once-neglected riverfront.
But don't expect a throwback stadium such as Baltimore's Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which started a ballpark building boom in 1992, with its red-brick facade, ornate ironwork and historic warehouse.
"We do not want to see just another baseball stadium," said Allen Y. Lew, chief executive of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission. "We want signature architecture. We're not looking to just mimic other cities."
The sports commission, along with the staff of Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), will oversee ballpark design and construction. The commission plans to select a chief architect this month.
At least 75 representatives for 35 firms, including the half-dozen leading sports architecture companies, have obtained the city's 28-page packet of instructions. The city has advised potential designers to consider recently built ballparks but to "create architecture for Washington that is distinctive and of this time."
What that means, exactly, is open to interpretation.
Toni L. Griffin, a city deputy planning director, noted that the stadium's waterfront site near the Navy Yard and South Capitol Street is "not an area surrounded by a lot of brick or stone or marble. So it's an opportunity to really set a design vocabulary for this district on the waterfront."
The stadium project, one of several ballparks on the drawing board in major cities, might become part of a movement that favors innovative designs. Last year, the San Diego Padres unveiled Petco Park, which featured a sandstone facade and palm-tree-lined gardens. A proposed new ballpark in Miami for the Florida Marlins will not use bricks, but rather glass and steel, said an architect who designed it.
A majority of the 14 baseball-only stadiums constructed in the past 13 years mimic the traditional look ushered in by Oriole Park, which was viewed as an escape from bloated, multipurpose bowls -- such as Washington's Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, which once was shared by the Redskins and baseball's Senators. Recently, there has been a backlash against the so-called "retro ballparks, " which some architecture critics have called a cliche.
Peter Eisenman, a New York-based architect who used a desert cactus as inspiration for the design of the new stadium for the Arizona Cardinals football team, said that European sports facilities are more daring and modern. He suggested that the District hold a design competition, instead of a traditional bidding process, to foster creativity.
The Williams administration went through an acrimonious debate with the D.C. Council to win approval for a publicly funded stadium. A major challenge for the city and the new architect will be to live within the city's estimated $279 million stadium construction budget.
Officials want to keep the height of the structure relatively low so it won't overpower residential neighborhoods a few blocks away. Major League Baseball's requirements include 41,000 seats, 2,000 club seats, 66 private suites, a restaurant and a picnic area.
Architects say the club seat and private suite requirements are not extraordinary and probably can be met with one concourse level, matching the thinking of Stephen M. Green, a special adviser to the mayor on baseball issues.
Green says the city is seeking a ballpark that is relatively small -- with three concourses similar to Pittsburgh's PNC Park, rather than four. Such a design is said to add intimacy.
"We want to be democratic," Green said. "We are trending toward less exclusivity."
The smaller size also cuts costs. As planned, D.C's ballpark will be 1.05 million square feet, while some parks are as big as 1.4 million square feet. Architects call the ballpark's budget adequate but hardly exorbitant.
As the architects are vetted by the D.C. sports commission, a group of city planners is working on a master plan for a ballpark district that would feature mixed-use development, strongly influencing how the stadium is set on 21 acres.
Andrew Altman, head of the city's Anacostia Waterfront Development Corp., envisions a river-walk leading to the park, which could feature retail shops and restaurants on the ground level. Roads would be widened and extended to the river, and a new bridge leading over the river on South Capitol Street has been proposed.
Lane Welter of HNTB Architecture -- which is retrofitting RFK Stadium, the Nationals' temporary home, and intends to bid for the new ballpark -- said inspiration could be drawn from D.C.'s international flavor.
"That would be interesting to pin down," Welter said. "But the ballpark has to be used as a centerpiece to revitalization of the Anacostia. That will set a tone, and from there who knows what will be spawned?"
City planners are studying such factors as which way the stadium should open -- with a view to the Capitol on the north or the water to the south. They also are studying where fans should enter the ballpark -- behind home plate or through a gate near the outfield.
"We want the ballpark to help in the creation of a neighborhood, and not just be an isolated icon," Altman said.
Whether the new ballpark can do that and fulfill its other functions remains to be seen.
With the financial stakes high, the Nationals and Major League Baseball will keep close watch over the process through a team representative, whose $3.7 million fee will be paid by the District. Generating revenue inside the park is key for a team trying to remain competitive and turn a profit.
Across the country, cities with major league teams are creating large concourses with televisions, so fans can linger in the concessions areas without missing any action. Picnic and gathering areas, such as the waterfront promenade in San Francisco or the Park at the Park in San Diego, are considered a must-have as teams seek to get fans to "come early and stay late," as the marketing mantra goes.
"The big thing now in our business is that design has to be a lot more flexible, and you do not put all your marbles in one revenue stream," said Earl Santee, a lead designer for HOK Sport of Kansas City. Santee has traveled to the District several times to help prepare his company's bid for the project.
"We've taken the emphasis off the suite, and that's changed the design paradigm," Santee said. "I like a big lower deck and big main concourse. It's like main street, where everyone comes together."
If there are fewer exclusive seats in the District's stadium than in other ballparks, architects probably will be pressured to create other revenue-generating features.
In Baltimore, then-Orioles President Larry Lucchino and his lead architects from HOK created a ballpark experience that became a hit by almost every measure. Fans have loved the traditional look and feel of the park, with its nod to the area's history through the incorporation of the red-brick B&O Warehouse beyond right field. Owners love the park's amenities -- the 75 luxury suites and the Eutaw Street promenade, where fans spend money on Boog's Barbecue and team-owned stores. Not coincidentally, while the ballpark's ceremonial entrance is behind home plate, most fans enter through the large gates on Eutaw Street.
HOK, a leading sports architecture firm, has designed 10 of the 14 most recent ballparks, as well as football stadiums and other sports arenas. Santee noted that team owners often demand a more traditional stadium because Oriole Park has been so successful and because baseball is the most traditional of sports.
Sports architects are important because they know what teams want, the architect Eisenman said, but they "don't specialize in what I would call symbolic icons. These guys are interested mainly in cranking them out."
But Santee took exception to the notion that sports architects cannot provide creative design ideas.
At the direction of Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, who is an avid art collector, HOK designed the team's proposed glass-and-steel-based ballpark. "It's going to change the way America looks at sporting buildings," Santee said.
Some teams are taking steps to foster more innovative designs. The San Diego Padres selected HOK to build Petco Park but paired the firm with architect Antoine Predock, whose Southwest-inspired designs had won raves but who never had designed a sports structure. The team also hired ROMA, an urban planning firm from San Francisco, to help ensure the stadium would aid the redevelopment of blighted East Village.
Predock imported sandstone from India to produce an outer shell that matched San Diego's geography. Instead of placing administrative offices in the bowels of the stadium, Predock put them in two towers and opened the main concourse to the sky to take advantage of the city's balmy weather. D.C. officials expect the baseball stadium to play an integral role in city life for more than 30 years.
"The new park should be seen as a building where if you see it on a postcard, it doesn't have to say D.C. or Nationals," HNTB's Welter said. "You just know it's D.C."
Ballpark has to be something special
By Eric Fisher
The Washington Times - January 28, 2005
The District's ambitious, forward-looking wish list for the Washington Nationals' future home is laid out in a recently released request for proposals, and was reiterated this week in a prebid meeting with 35 prospective architecture and design firms.
As with other key portions of the stadium project, the timetable is tight. Design proposals are expected back by Feb. 15, with the winning architectural team to be selected 13 days later. But amid the compressed environment, competition is expected to be heavy for one of highest-profile sports design contracts in recent memory.
"We think this is a unique opportunity to do something special for Washington and have it look like it was really intended for Washington," said Allen Y. Lew, chief executive officer of the D.C. Sports & Entertainment Commission. "We're really talking something along the lines of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
The proposal document specifies a desire for a stadium that is "timeless, unique in the nation's capital and its waterfront setting, and representative of 21st-century architectural ideals," Mr. Lew said. Buttressing that is a requirement for each bidder to have experience with "projects of similar national or international significance in urban environments."
But Mr. Lew was quick to say that does not mean the stadium will be a staid, formal facility mirroring many of the city's federal office buildings.
"We're not suggesting that this just look like something along the Mall," he said. "What we're after is a truly fresh approach."
Also critical to the design project is a strong linkage to the forthcoming Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, a massive redevelopment in which the ballpark will play a central role. District officials, through a relocation contract with Major League Baseball, have targeted the new stadium's completion for March 1, 2008.
The desire to have a unique ballpark design is not entirely new or exclusive to Washington. Baltimore's Camden Yards, which opened in 1992, ushered in a sweeping change in ballpark design through its celebrated marriage of modern amenities and classic stylings such as brick exteriors and wrought iron.
But over the next decade, stadiums such as Jacobs Field in Cleveland, Ameriquest Field in Arlington, Texas, and Coors Field in Denver copied many of the Baltimore elements, to the point where Camden Yards became seen by some as simply a new version of the cookie-cutter design it was intended to replace.
To that end, some recently built major league parks have forged their own, more locally congruous identities. PNC Park in Pittsburgh features a rough-hewn limestone exterior that weaves well into its western Pennsylvania setting. San Diego's Petco Park boasts a mission-inspired design and heavy use of palm trees in its locally themed landscaping.
"There really aren't many other new major league facilities left to be built, so this is really a career project," said Bill Johnson, senior principal for Kansas City-based 360 Architecture, one of the firms seeking the Washington contract. "We're talking about building the home for the national pastime in the nation's capital. I can't think of a more important and interesting ballpark to do."
Meanwhile, work continues at a fast pace to prepare RFK Stadium for April 3, when the Nationals will play an exhibition game against the New York Mets. With much of the preliminary field preparation work complete and temperatures plunging in recent days, workers have begun to move toward interior projects such as press box and locker room renovation, and construction of batting tunnels.
Progress is also being made, albeit slowly, in determining the new owner of the MLB-owned Nationals. Representatives of the prospective ownership group led by District financier Fred Malek took their turn yesterday reviewing Nationals financial documents at MLB's New York headquarters.
The group is believed to be the fourth such potential bidder to start the due diligence process, joining the family of local developer Ted Lerner, District entrepreneur Jonathan Ledecky and Tennessee businessman Franklin Haney.
Northern Virginia businessman William Collins III, who announced his intent last fall to bid on the Nationals, is expected to get his turn with the Nationals' books in February. The review of the books is an important step in helping prospective bidders prepare their offers for the franchise.
Still missing, however, is a clear understanding of the Nationals' projected local TV revenue, which is tied up in unresolved negotiations between MLB and Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos over a compensation package to protect the Orioles against revenue loss from the Montreal Expos' relocation to Washington.
A new Nationals owner is expected sometime early this summer, with MLB likely to fetch more than $300 million for the club.
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Private Financing Deals Offered for Stadium
Proposals Would Rely on Parking Revenue, Tax Write-Offs and Development of Nearby Land
By David Nakamura
Washington Post - January 19, 2005
Among the proposals were a developer's offer to pay for much of the $530 million project in return for the right to build a mixed-use town center on adjacent land; a plan that would give the city $100 million in exchange for revenue from a special parking district; and one that would allow private investors to build the ballpark and use it as a tax write-off.
The plans will be examined by the city's chief financial officer, Natwar M. Gandhi, who has until March 15 to determine whether any of them is feasible. He will report his findings to Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), who will forward a recommendation to the D.C. Council. The $10,000 fee, which will be used by Gandhi to pay for consultants, also was intended to discourage less serious entrepreneurs from sending in proposals, government sources said.
The council, at the insistence of Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D), approved stadium financing legislation last month mandating that half the project be funded with private money. Major League Baseball officials said that District officials were free to pursue private money, but they convinced Cropp to remove a clause in the legislation that said the project would die if no private financing were found.
"My office will carefully review the plans, and will consult with outside financial advisors to determine the financial feasibility and cost to the District of each plan," Gandhi wrote in a letter to Williams and Cropp yesterday.
The financing plan approved by the council allows District officials to issue nearly $550 million in bonds. If enough private money is found, the bonds could be paid off without a gross receipts tax on city businesses.
A spokesman for Gandhi declined to identify the groups that submitted plans or discuss details.
But developer Herbert S. Miller, the Cleveland-based Gates Group and BW Realty Advisors, a finance company run by Richard A. Gross, said yesterday that they had submitted proposals.
Miller said his plan would allow the city to reduce its investment significantly. He envisions building the ballpark as part of a larger, mixed-use complex that encompasses the 21 acres for the stadium project as well as 12 acres to the north.
Under this proposal, Miller would pay for building the ballpark and an underground parking structure with 5,500 spaces, as well as infrastructure upgrades to nearby streets and underground water pipes.
In exchange, he would own the land outside the ballpark and would try to lure major retail shops and restaurants. A conference center and hotel also would be built on the property.
This plan would allow the city to do away with the gross receipts tax that is projected to raise about $14 million a year to pay off the stadium bonds, Miller said. A utility tax on businesses and federal buildings, which would raise $11 million, still would be needed.
"You get great community benefits, you don't get the [gross receipts tax] and you get a town center," Miller said.
The Gates Group has proposed to give the city $100 million up front. In return, the District would establish a special parking district on streets surrounding the stadium and give Gates Group investors a cut of the revenue from parking fees for more than 20 years.
The plan from BW Realty proposes that the city buy the land for the stadium and pay for infrastructure upgrades; the group's private investors would pay for the ballpark construction. The investors would own the stadium for at least 20 years and write off depreciation on their taxes before turning over the ballpark to the city.
The plans from the Gates Group and BW Realty had been disclosed previously.
John Ross, a top adviser to Gandhi, said last week that all the proposals being made to the city generally fell into those three categories, providing private financing through parking revenue, development rights or tax-sheltered investment.
Mayoral advisers have worked with some of the groups over the past few months. One administration official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because the process is ongoing, said: "A lot of people bandy about ideas, but until we sit and churn through the numbers, it's hard to say which will work. It's that old saying: Show me the money."
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