Expanding Fenway and keeping history alive

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Expanding Fenway and keeping history alive (6/23/05)

Visitors to New England will quickly discover two things:

it is quaint, and
most anyone who grew up around here has been to Fenway.

Both points are true but it is the second point we'll be taking up today, because there always seems to be a plan of some sort to change Fenway or even move it (heathens!). It shouldn't be touched, let alone expanded, and yet it must be in order for the ball club to compete with the other clubs. Since the other clubs have more seating it stands to reason they will have higher revenues and can therefore entice the best players to their clubs.

Consider these aerial views of Fenway and Yankee Stadium:

Aerial view of Fenway Park Aerial view of Yankee Stadium

Both images are taken from the same height and it is relatively trivial to see the difference in seating capacity. Fenway has 36,298 to the Yankee's 57,545. Using a base ticket cost of $45 carried over the 162 games of the 05 season the Sox make roughly $155 Million less than the Yankees. That isn't exactly chump change, and doesn't even figure in the loss of concession profits. I hope it puts into perspective last year's achievement and why it took so long to happen.

So how can we solidify our lead? Turning streets into pedestrian ways is one way to encourage neighborhood revitalization so let us assume, for a moment, that the streets around Fenway (Lansdowne and a part of Van Ness) could be turned completely into pedestrian ways, and as such, support columns could be driven into them to allow for the construction of a Fenway expansion a floor or two above the pedestrian ways. How big might the ballpark be then?

Fenway would have enough seating to compete with most clubs at this point. Such an undertaking should not be done lightly however. The existing field would have to be historically restored to it's state in 1945, before the skyview seats were installed, before the skybox seats, before the end of WWII, and most importantly, to it's state when one of the greats was playing: Ted Williams. Because back then, with all of that removed and with the extra space created as above, proper stadium style seating can be erected around the 1945 seating without disturbing the base, historically accurate, field we all know and love.

Click the picture to Enlarge
1930s Fenway, from the BPL's
"Sports Temples of Boston" collection

The new seats could simply be built up with the floors using different color to plainly show where our history is. An exhibit could be constructed to discuss all of this and placed in the park, and to really bring the point home... life size bronze statues of Fenway's most famous players, staff, and fans interspersed throughout the park as well as actually seated in some of the seats.

Historical Fenway can be preserved while allowing the construction of the seats necessary for us to increase stadium capacity. And with the luxury of all that space, the Sox could afford to reduce ticket prices a little bit. ;-)

As for the pedestrian ways, I'm thinking of downtown Las Vegas's lightshow. Nothing like that needs to be done, but I just want to demonstrate we could make that space quite usable and interesting. The space created by eliminating the road on Landsdowne in particular would be welcome and the stadium above would provide an anchor for lights to illuminate the area.