The pitcher’s mound in the Bronx will be where a yellow Dumpster rests, while a steel span in Flushing that emulates the Hell Gate bridge over the East River will soon support the concourse in right-center field.
The Mets and the Yankees are racing to open their new stadiums by opening day 2009. Those passing the construction sites — huge rocky pits that are filled with cranes, earth movers, steel, giant pieces of precast concrete — see the concrete frame of one stadium rising in the Bronx over former parkland and another one of steel ascending over parking spaces beside Shea Stadium.
“This place is so big, so wide open now, but when it’s filled with grass and seats, it will envelop you,” said Jeff Wilpon, the chief operating officer of the Mets, as he walked through the Citi Field site during a recent tour.
Behind him, Shea remains, a vestige of an unadventurous period in sports architecture. “A dull, dingy place,” Wilpon said.
In his office, Wilpon keeps a miniature replica of Ebbets Field, a daily reminder of the architectural muse of Citi Field. It includes the rotunda through which Brooklyn Dodgers fans, including his father, Fred, the Mets’ principal owner, used to enter. He removed the tiny rotunda piece from the rest of the model and said, “Fred can tell us how it used to smell in there.”
A reimagined rotunda, which will be named for Jackie Robinson, is also beginning to take shape; so is the footprint of the Great Hall, a meeting place, among other things, through which many of the fans visiting the new Yankee Stadium will enter. It will stand 60 feet high and span left field to right field, along 161st Street, from Jerome Avenue to River Avenue.
“It will be unparalleled, similar in scope to the Grand Central Station waiting room,” said Valerie Peltier, a managing director for development of Tishman Speyer, on a tour of the Yankee Stadium site last week. Tishman Speyer is overseeing construction of the $800 million stadium. Jerry Speyer, the company’s president, is on the board of Yankee Global Enterprises.
Executives from each team said that they were not competing with each other over who would have the better ballpark. It is almost enough that the deals were made, with city and state contributions for infrastructure and other nonconstruction costs, to let the teams build new ballparks. Since 1991, 18 new major league stadiums have been built.
