Questions and Answers (below)

Q: I see your upper deck is supported by columns. How many seats will be obstructed view?

Q: I’m a small person. What about obstruction from the person in front of you?

Q: What about the problem of the horizontal cross-isle – those are horrible seats because people walk in front of you all game?

Q: What about amenities like restrooms and concessions?

Q: What about parking facilities?

Q: Could upper deck bleachers be added in the future if there was a desire to increase seating further?

Q: Where will the team play while reconstruction takes place?

Q: For the Red Sox management, everything seems to be about money. How do the “revenue streams” in your design compare to that of the Red Sox New Stadium Proposal?

Q: So what do you estimate the reconstruction will cost?

Q: Why has the symposium  developed two different plans for Fenway Park (the Reconstruction Plan and the Preservation Plan)?

Q: How many seats will there be during construction (assuming they played in Fenway Park)?

Q: What can you say about the quality of theseating, in terms of proximity to the field?

This plan has a seating capacity of 38,000-40,000 (not counting standing room) depending on our final decisions regarding seating widths and the number of rows in the grandstand and upper decks. This is quite a bit more than existing Fenway Park (33,871) and comparable to Wrigley Field. This is less than the Red Sox New Stadium Proposal’s 44,000 seats, but some 5,000 of those seats are truly distant upper deck bleacher seats, more appropriate to a cookie-cutter football stadium than Fenway Park. One could add the same to this plan, but we feel that approach is “un-Fenway-like.”

Less than one-half of one-percent of seats (a few hundred total) will be obstructed view (defined as being unable to directly see home plate or the pitcher’s mound). There is another sort of obstruction that we have been careful to eliminate: we have located the upper deck so that a person in the last row of the lower grandstand can see enough of the sky to follow the path of a fly ball. (This is a flaw of Wrigley Field.)

This plan maintains the relatively low riser (7”), except for the last three rows, which are higher to meet ADA (Americans With Disabilities) standards. There are always trade-offs. The problem with a higher riser is that it pushes all the seats up and by the time you get to the back rows, the fans are moved too far away from the playing field. 

We still have the cross isle, but we have solved that problem by pushing that first row 3.4 feet above the cross isle. The cross isle is a “critical feature to the compact design of the ballpark,” which allows the ballpark to stay within the existing footprint. This plan fits on 8 acres, while the Red Sox Stadium Proposal takes up 15 acres. The playing fields are the same size: the difference is huge amount of space outside the playing area used to circulate people and services in the Sox Stadium (an industry standard design). In contrast, the reconstruction plan uses the ballpark’s internal volume to facilitate horizontal and vertical circulation.

This plan finds ways to meet all required needs for restrooms and points of sale.

The Urban Design Working Group is handling the big picture regarding parking (see the meeting notes from Tuesday, August 9, for details).  In a nutshell, they have adopted a stance of “ZPG” – Zero Parking Growth. They have a strategy for nearby, institution-based satellite parking, with walking paths and shuttle buses. There are 200 parking spaces in the building behind right field for players and team employees. Again, our approach is to discover a way for the Red Sox and the Fenway community to be reciprocal good neighbors, rather than letting the needs of one trump the other.

Under the Reconstruction set-up, this would obstruct the Ballpark Club behind right field. If the deck was high enough, it might not get in the way. But, again, these would be very distant seats. We recommend against it. Our design approach is to respect the character of the neighborhood, the ballpark, and the experience of the fans.

There is no one answer to this. The full reconstruction would take approximately 24-30 months, depending on the sequencing phase adopted. There are several possible solutions. First, they could play someplace else, ranging from a college field to Pawtucket to a reconfigured Foxboro. Each of those locations has drawbacks.

A second option is to play in the ballpark while it is being renovated. The Preservation plan allows for this by phasing construction over 5 years, but the “surgery” in the Reconstruction plan is more severe. It might be possible if “vertical demolition” were used. That is, working from the bottom up, rebuilding the grandstand and then using scaffolding to work above people. While possible, there are safety and cost issues.

There is a third, more creative solution -- something in keeping with the quirkiness of the ballpark and its fans. This would involve “horizontal demolition” -- reconstructing the ballpark in sections, beginning with the 1912 grandstand. The idea is to temporarily reconfigure the field so that home plate would be in what is now the right field corner, putting the Green Monster in “right field” instead of left! The bleachers would become the box seats, the bullpens the dugouts, and there would be temporary bleachers in the area that is now deep centerfield. (Day games might have to start earlier, and night games would have to start a little later to avoid problems with the sun.)

While this option may seem (and literally is) out in right field, there is a strange logic to it. It has the makings of a cult phenomenon, likely to spur a cottage industry of caps and shirts. One can image a time in the future when the two years baseball was played “backwards” in Fenway Park become part of baseball lore.

We haven’t calculated that yet, as we are still working out design details. Probably, given our time frame for this project, that calculation is something the folks at Save Fenway Park might have to take up. But keep in mind that the proper measure is net revenues, and our ballpark will be considerably less expensive to build, especially given the land-taking costs for the Sox stadium proposal.

Again, the Reconstruction Plan is not “program’ driven, but tries to do the best possible job of meeting the long-term interests of not only the team, but also the neighborhood and the taxpayers. Public subsidies, and land-takings, should be reserved for public goods, not private businesses.

We estimate $25 million for the annex building behind right field. We are trying to be conservative in our cost estimates. There are two simple ways to calculate the rest of the costs. The first is to use the Red Sox numbers. Their adjusted costs come up to $217 per square foot. By this measure, the ballpark reconstruction would cost about $175 million, for a total of $200 million. The other way to calculate is to use the Daedelus number, from their audit of the Hagenagh renovation Plan. They came up with $295 per square foot, which would raise Reconstruction Plan costs to $250-280 million total, but that formula would also greatly increase the Red Sox stadium cost projections. (By contrast, the Red Sox estimate their stadium costs at $352 million, and the whole project at $664 million.)

The Reconstruction Plan saves money by using only two-thirds of the space, while gaining most of the program.

We were asked by the sponsoring organizations – Save Fenway Park and the Fenway CDC – to develop two different approaches. The Preservation Plan explores the benefits of the “historic district” approach. The Reconstruction Plan presented tonight seeks to maximize team revenues within the existing footprint. Both plans increase the rationality of the ballpark – it’s a matter of degree. 

Howard Decker: “These are different ways of looking at how to provide major league baseball in this space and this time. Our joint finding is that whatever you [the Red Sox] want to do, you can make this work in a more appropriate way.”

We don’t know yet. We’re still calculating and strategizing. We will have a better answer on Saturday. [The latest answer is 20,244.]

The lack of details released on the New Red Sox Stadium make a direct comparison difficult, but we believe that the 38-39,000 seats in the Reconstruction Plan will compare favorably to a comparable number of the best seats in the Red Sox stadium proposal. The front row of our upper deck is 120 feet from home plate: that is 10-12 feet closer than the upper deck at the current Fenway Park, 22-23 feet closer than Wrigley Field, and 38-45 feet closer than ANY of the new stadiums. Only Tiger Stadium and old Comiskey Park (both replaced) were closer. And we’ve done this without any bad seats in the lower section.