Future Fenway Design Symposium

Future Fenway Design Symposium

Opening Remarks by Philip Bess
Saturday, August 5, 2000

Fenway Park is a treasure. For tens of millions of people in America and throughout the world, Fenway Park is synonymous not only with the Red Sox but with Boston itself.

Nevertheless, Fenway Park today is threatened by the current economic structure of Major League Baseball; and the proposition has been put forth that only a new stadium built to current industry standards can keep the Red Sox profitable and competitive, and provide their fans with the comforts and conveniences that baseball fans elsewhere have come both to enjoy and take for granted. As a bonus, the Red Sox claim that their proposed new $665M stadium will enhance the quality of life in Boston generally, and also in the Fenway neighborhood in which the proposed stadium is to be located—enhance it enough to warrant some $312M in public subsidies for their project.

I am here, today and for the next week, with a group of gifted design and building professionals from Boston and around the country, invited to town by Save Fenway Park! and the Fenway Community Development Corporation. We are here both to challenge the propositions being put forward by the Red Sox, and to explore an alternative way for the Red Sox to achieve their objectives at significantly less cost to both taxpayers and to their neighbors.

We are here with a different approach to ballpark design than has been tried recently; and to begin to differentiate our point of view, we want to begin by re-defining the problem. The problem up until now has been defined entirely in terms of what the Red Sox want, and what the Red Sox need. We would like to re-define the problem in terms of the city and the neighborhood, and to characterize our approach as an exercise in neighborliness.

Over the course of the next week we intend to look comprehensively at several related issues: a major Fenway Park reconstruction proposal; a Fenway Park preservation and restoration proposal; urban design in the Fenway neighborhood; and the unavoidable parking, traffic, and transportation issues that arise when considering these other issues.

In so doing, we will be trying to be good neighbors to the Red Sox, to seek for ways to help them to flourish as our neighbors, and to treat them with the respect that we ourselves would wish to be treated by them. But we are insisting also for the Red Sox to be good neighbors: that they not covet their neighbors' property; and that they not presume to take too much tax money from the pockets of their fellow citizens.

We begin our exercise with certain assumptions:

Our first assumption is about the primacy of good city life, and the integral and reciprocal relationship of Fenway Park to its neighborhood, where each is a critical component of the character of the other. Our understanding of the characteristics of good neighborhoods are described simply and succinctly in the one page document "11 Principles of Good Neighborhoods," which is included in the hand-out material you were given this morning.

Our second assumption is that the ballpark exercise should be driven more by the character of the site than by the Red Sox building program—as it was when Fenway Park was originally built, but not as it has been for the last dozen years. This does not mean that we are unmindful of the Red Sox programmatic objectives, but simply that these objectives must be weighed against other legitimate objectives.

Our third assumption follows from the second: that our design explorations for Fenway Park will assume that the Red Sox should stay on the block on which they are currently located and not be permitted to take any privately held land owned by others.

Our final assumption concerns what we propose at the very least to save of the existing Fenway Park; and this includes a) the playing field in its current configuration; b) the Green Monster; c) the existing right and right-center field bleachers; and d) portions of the existing façade to be determined. Our preservation proposal will in all likelihood call for saving even more; but even our most aggressive reconstruction proposal will call for saving at least this much.

What do we hope to produce over the coming week? Our hope and intention is to produce two different proposals — a preservationist proposal and a reconstruction proposal--for a renovated Fenway Park, proposals that include sufficient graphic information to determine what the proposals would look like, what they would cost to construct, and the kinds of revenues they could be expected to generate for the Red Sox.

In addition, we intend to "flesh out" an existing proposal for the design of an "urban village" in the Fenway neighborhood — again, with sufficient graphic information to indicate both what it would look like, what the proposed mix of residential, retail, commercial, and civic uses might be, what it might cost, and the economic development opportunities it would represent.

How are we proposing to produce all of this; how are we proposing to engage the public in this process; and who is the audience for this work? We are proposing to produce all of this over the next week in an intensive design workshop that is known in architectural circles as a "charrette;" and the charrette is the means by which we are intending to engage the public, starting today. After the presentations this morning, we will be asking you to tell us the issues that you think are important with respect both to the future of Fenway Park and the future of the Fenway neighborhood.

We cannot promise that we will resolve each issue to everyone's satisfaction, because not all desires are reconcilable. But we do promise that we will consider your concerns; and if we do not resolve them in exactly the way you want, we will at least try to explain our reasons for doing whatever it is we propose to do.

Moreover, this process of public participation is not confined to this meeting. We are working over at the Simmons College library, in room 308. When we are there, the doors will be open; and if you can endure the near chaos, you are welcome to come see what we are doing. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings from 6pm until 8pm, the public is invited to a review and critique session, to see where we are in our work, to voice your concerns (and on occasion, we hope, your praise), and to see how the concerns you raise are being addressed.

And who is the intended (or at least hoped for) audience for our work? That's easy; in no particular order: the Red Sox, Boston and Massachusetts politicians, Bostonians in general, Red Sox fans, baseball fans, and lovers of cities everywhere. We'll be working out in the open; you're all invitedŠ And if you can't manage to come to the site, we hope to have daily postings of our progress on the Save Fenway Park website by Monday evening.

Why will our proposal be better than what the Red Sox have proposed? Let me suggest several reasons:

  • Our proposal will occupy approximately half as much land as the Red Sox proposal, on land the Red Sox already own.
  • Our proposal will require no taking of private property belonging to someone else.
  • Our proposal will retain the economic value and consume less of existing neighborhood property; and as a consequence will allow more ancillary neighborhood development.
  • Each of our reconstructed or renovated ballpark proposals will cost significantly less money to build, and will significantly increase current Red Sox revenue streams.
  • Our ballpark proposals will be noticeably—no, viscerrally—more intimate than the new stadium the Red Sox are proposing.
  • Our ballpark proposals will preserve and extend and improve the living tradition of baseball at Fenway Park—a historic site and an important piece of Boston.
  • And finally (as befits the Athens of America, which has always prided itself in leading rather than following) we hope the proposals we come up with here in Boston will demonstrate to other cities now contemplating new ballparks a different and better paradigm than the present industry standard, of which the current Red Sox proposal is but the latest and costliest dismal example.

Finally, what is it that motivates us to fight to save and restore Fenway Park, and to work for the creation of good neighborhoods? I've just identified a sizeable number of practical and pragmatic issues, including economic issues, and traffic and transportation issues. But important as all these issues are, to me they are ultimately secondary to another issue; and that issue is qualitative. [slide: Ghent Altarpiece] Those who know me know that I will show this image, every chance I get, at the drop of a hat. It is an image of Paradise--not only an image of the good life, but the artist's image of the very best life imaginable; and it is an image of a City and a Garden in relationship to one another. [slide: Wrigley Field] Those who know me also know that I like to juxtapose this image--of Wrigley Field--with the one on the left, because it too juxtaposes a city and a kind of garden.

And here I must tell you a brief story, one that has occurred in slightly different form perhaps as many as half a dozen times since I have lived in Chicago. A friend came to visit me from out of town, and we went to a night game at Wrigley. The weather was warm, the ivy on the wall was green, the twilight was purple and orange and pink, the lake visible to the east was turning a steely gray, the grills were fired up on the rooftops across the street, the el-train would clatter past every five minutes or so, the Cubs were winning, and the ballpark and the city were working together like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. And my friend turned to me after a long silence and said, simply: "This is perfect." And so it was; and so I have said to myself so often when I go to Wrigley Field.

[slide: Fenway Park] This is another example of a garden in a city. And the way I feel about Wrigley Field, and its neighborhood, and my own neighborhood as well, is (I suspect) exactly how many Bostonians—and many visitors to Boston--feel about Fenway Park, and about their own neighborhoods. These are not replicas, and they are not commodities. They are real, tangible, historical things that we love and for which we care for their own sake; and their joys make the pains we endure for their sake a mere inconvenience. And it is above all for the sake of these joys—joys that are and should be the prerogative of every human being, of the poor as well as the wealthy--it is for the sake of such joys that we fight for our neighborhoods and we fight for Fenway Park.

There is a lot of anger, in Boston and throughout the country, towards professional sports franchises and towards politicians willing to write them big checks; and frankly, much of this anger is warranted. But today I want to ask the design team here assembled, and the sponsors of this charrette, and the Boston politicians who have come to this meeting, and all those persons everywhere who love both Fenway Park and this great, great city, to try to move past that anger; to try to channel that anger toward good ends. We create friends by being friends, and we create good neighborhoods by being good neighbors.

Your own political struggle here — which for those of us from out of town, for this week at least, is our political struggle as well — your struggle is in truth a small version of a civil war. This being so, I hope it is appropriate for me to conclude my remarks with an allusion to words uttered by America's greatest president near the end of our country's most terrible Civil War more than a century ago. I therefore would urge us all to work this week bearing malice for none, and charity for all; with firmness in the right, as Providence gives us to see what is right; striving to finish our work and to do all we can to achieve the good of this neighborhood, the good of the Red Sox, and the good of this great City of Boston.

Thank youŠ

Future Fenway Design Symposium

Opening Remarks
by Philip Bess


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