If the list is finally recovering from yet another bout of "Ballpark fatigue", I offer
this up......
As a member of this Ballpark Committee, I bring to the list's attention the article in
today's Strib and a little backgrouond information from last night.
http://www2.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisStory=82756011
At last night's meeting Chuck Ballentine (Planning Director) dropped a bit of a
stunner. Whereas all previous conversations had the ballpark somewhere downtown, he
stated the City may be willing to consider a non-downtown site for a ballpark. He
said no specific sites are under active consideration. He even said that one way to
do this might be for the City will open it up to the neighbohoods to bid on. Kind of
a funny stance to take on something that has apparently been run out of town three
times in the past five years.
So, it begs the question, would any neighborhoods outside the downtown actually
embrace a ballpark. Could any neighbohoods actually conceive of a ballpark as
contributing to their neighborhood? If so, what would it look like? Is this the
stupidest idea of all?
It seems to me that a critical piece to all of this would of course be a different
mental model of what a ballpark is. Clearly it would not be the Metrodome. It
probably would not even be the so called "industry standard" as seen in Cleveland,
Seattle, Baltimore, Denver, blah, blah, blah. That is the same old same old. Those
could be considered "the Block E's of Ballparks" or "mall-parks". Chuck said the
point is for a "neighborhood ballpark" to be what the neighbohood wants (thats a novel
idea). No one knows exctly what that means, but I think it would be something more in
the model of Chicago's Wrigley Field, or Boston's Fenway Park.
One other critical tidbit, we were told to operate under the assumption that it would
be privately financed.
Andrew Dresdner, AICP
Cuningham Group
(612) 379-5558
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
