The Texas Rangers are sticking with the home team to design their new stadium in Arlington. HKS, the Dallas-based firm that worked on both AT&T Stadium and Globe Life Park, has been selected as design architect for the Rangers’ $1 billion retractable-roof stadium, the team said Thursday.
As part of their efforts to secure a new ballpark, the Arizona Diamondbacks have sued Maricopa County over repairs to Chase Field, reports Rebekah L. Sanders of the Arizona Republic. The lawsuit was filed with the Maricopa County Supreme Court on Tuesday.
When NHL ice guru Dan Craig stepped out of an 18-wheeler in downtown St. Louis on Dec. 15, ready to start preparing Busch Stadium for the Winter Classic, he took a gaze at the surroundings. “Oh, this is gorgeous,” Craig marveled. “This is absolutely gorgeous. It’s fantastic, love it. You can feel it already.” The man who has been in charge of all eight of the NHL’s Winter Classics could instantly see what those with the Blues, Cardinals and anyone else who’s driven past the stadium have been envisioning.
Four of college football’s 40 bowl games this year are in MLB stadiums. Most major stadiums are multi-purposed in some fashion or another, but football games in baseball parks is a weird match. It requires fitting a 120-yard-long rectangular peg into a diamond-shaped hole. It doesn’t always look natural.
No, Busch Stadium III was not designed with hosting the National Hockey League’s Winter Classic in mind. “Why didn’t you build in the rink?” St. Louis Blues chairman Tom Stillman jokingly asked St. Louis Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III Thursday afternoon after the league’s $1 million mobile refrigeration unit arrived at the ballpark. “We probably should have thought about that,” DeWitt said with a chuckle.
The Chicago Cubs have a shorter offseason than ever before thanks to winning their first World Series title in 108 years. Which means less time to complete a lot of renovation work at Wrigley Field. The team this week detailed the parts of the Friendly Confines that will get face-lifts over the next few months in the latest stage of the 1060 Project, a $750 million ballpark renovation and redevelopment of its surrounding area.
With less than 150 days to go until the first regular-season game in SunTrust Park, the Braves are selling ticket packages, setting up new offices and spending some of their anticipated revenue increase on (very) veteran pitchers. The Braves’ race to opening day, which began with the announcement three years ago this month of the move to Cobb County, has entered the final sprint.
Home-field advantage didn’t help the Texas Rangers in last month’s playoffs. But on Tuesday, it landed them a new $1 billion, retractable roof stadium. An Arlington proposition to help fund at least half of the new ballpark passed easily with the opposition conceding early in the evening. The deal will keep the Rangers in their original hometown through the team’s 82nd season, which would come in 2053.
In the 1990s, the Dallas Cowboys tried to get voters in Irving, where the team played, to leave the regional transit system and instead spend that sales tax revenue on upgrading Texas Stadium. Voters stuck with Dallas Area Rapid Transit and the Cowboys eventually left for nearby Arlington, who helped finance a new football stadium.
Not to steal the spotlight from the Chicago Cubs’ World Series run, but the crosstown rival White Sox began hoisting the sign for the baseball park’s new name. And yep, despite the social media hullabaloo that erupted when the naming-rights deal was announced two months ago, the newly named Guaranteed Rate Field still will carry the mortgage provider’s logo — a downward-pointing arrow.