CitiField - New Mets Stadium

[TalB]

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04102007...mente_lisi.htm
METS MESS

BALL 'PARK' WOES DRIVE SHEA FANS BATTY

By C.J. SULLIVAN and CLEMENTE LISI


PACKING 'EM IN: The construction of Citi Field in the Shea lot has made parking at the stadium so tight (above), that fans couldn't hold their traditional tailgate party before yesterday's sold-out home opener.


Fans like Steve and Jeffrey Vargian, Theresa Nastasia and Larry Steiner (from left) couldn't hold their traditional tailgate party before yesterday's sold-out home opener.

April 10, 2007 --

Fans who drove to Shea Stadium yesterday for the Mets' thrilling come-from-behind victory in the home opener not only had trouble finding a parking spot; they also couldn't tailgate once they got one.

The construction of Citi Field has taken away 2,200 spaces, forcing fans to park in several auxiliary lots - some as far as a mile from the stadium, but all costing $14 - at the Hall of Science, the World's Fair Marina and Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. And as if the inconvenience of walking or taking a shuttle bus weren't enough, the parking problems also halted traditional tailgating parties. "We went from a pregame barbecue on grass under a tree to now, where I ate a bologna sandwich with my foot on my car bumper," said Jeffrey Varjian, 42, a banker from Millburn, N.J., and one of the 56,227 fans who watched the Mets beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 11-5.

Varjian said it was impossible to set up grills and tables because of the limited space and the rush to get a spot. His brother, Steve, 30, who lives in Middle Village, Queens, said the "parking lots were full of cars" when he got there at 9:30 a.m., some 31/2 hours before the first pitch. "Luckily, taking the subway or Long Island Rail Road is an easy alternative," he said.

To alleviate the parking problems, NYC Transit will run extra No. 7 trains to Flushing and the LIRR will increase service on the Port Washington line on game days. Harold Eylward, 30, of Manhattan, said he normally drives to Shea, but hopped on the 7 instead. "The parking this year is ridiculous," he said, as the train came to a screeching halt in the Willets Point/Shea Stadium station. "The train is very easy." During last year's playoffs, ridership on game days reached 13,300 on the 7 train and 12,000 on the LIRR.

The problems yesterday didn't end with limited parking and no tailgating. Once inside Shea, fans complained that concession prices had never been so high. "You can only afford to go to one game a season," said George Gunn, 42, a retired NYPD officer who took his two daughters, Rose and Bridget, to the game. Gunn said he paid $4.50 for a medium soda and a total of $50 for food. "If the prices were lower, I would take the kids more," he said.

Larry Steiner, 58, a retired teacher from Roslyn, L.I., agreed, saying he shelled out $7.50 for a 12-ounce beer. "The prices are out of this world," he said. "It's like being held up for a Budweiser."

clemente.lisi@nypost.com

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DSCF2445 by Mikey 5, on Flickr

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Citi Field takes shape by NJ Baseball, on Flickr

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DSCF2453 by Mikey 5, on Flickr

[ZZ-II]

aren't in that area planned some new skyscapers over 200m?

[Dancer]

WOW that really looks like Safeco Field

[Scruffy88]

Originally Posted by ZZ-II

aren't in that area planned some new skyscapers over 200m?

In the Flushing, Corona, Elmhurst, Iron Triangle, Flushing Meadows Park area that surrounds the stadium, No. its not possible. the whole area is in a flight path to Laguardia Airport which is barely a few miles to the north

[bagel]

Originally Posted by edsg25

Oh, please, please, please, boybaha:

tell me that you don't consider a classic like Dodger Stadium to be a "cookie cutter" on any level?

Of all the parks out there, when it comes to a unique setting that stands up to the test of time, only Dodgers Stadium could be grouped with Wrigley and Fenway.

oops--- i'm replying 4 months after the fact. hehe.

Ok maybe not classic cookie cutter in the way Riverfront, 3 Rivers and Shea are. But I think Dodgers Stadium was the harbinger of things to come. Dodger Stadium is one of the best places to watch a ballgame. Its surroundings are really beautiful, nestled into Chavez Ravine. I guess what I meant by cookie cutter was one that was designed to be symmetrical, and not to fit an existing city grid. But you're right... it's not cookie cutter in the Shea Stadium sense. if anything it's a proto-cookie cutter because it presaged the age of the symmetrical stadiums.

[TalB]

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/..._new_home.html
Meet the Mets' new home!

Citi Field ballpark isn't set to open until '09, but field's taking shape

BY NICHOLAS HIRSHON

Tuesday, June 26th 2007, 4:00 AM

Beyond the bleachers at Shea Stadium, construction crews have spent months drilling and hammering away at the Mets' new ballpark - and here's a look at what they've accomplished so far.

Queens' next field of dreams, Citi Field, isn't set to open until the 2009 season, but it's taking shape faster than a Jose Reyes' run around the bases.

Metal girders are forming decks of seats where the next generation of Mets faithful can wear their orange and blue with pride.

And the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, where fans will enter the state-of-the-art stadium, has risen as a tribute to the man who broke baseball's color barrier in 1947. But that's only a preview of what's to come.

Inspired by the design of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Citi Field is being built to have the most intimate atmosphere in the game - not to mention attractions like an interactive Mets museum.

New Yorkers lucky enough to score luxury box seats are sure to get great views of David Wright making stabs at third and Carlos Beltran tracking down fly balls in center.

Yes, the Amazin's and their fans have a lot to look forward to - besides Pedro Martinez's return from the disabled list, whenever that might be.

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Queens - Flushing: Shea Stadium - Citifield Construction - April 2007 by wallyg, on Flickr

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Queens - Flushing: Shea Stadium - Citifield Construction - April 2007 by wallyg, on Flickr

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Queens - Flushing: Shea Stadium - Citifield Construction - April 2007 by wallyg, on Flickr

[New Jack City]

Updated pics:

http://sports.webshots.com/album/559678513JPyVGS

Brick is looking good!

[cincobarrio]

not looking bad at all. i'll really be looking forward to seeing a subway series game at citifield in the future.

[New Jack City]

Update:

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/met...iti-field.html

August:

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Citi Field Construction, August 2007 by halgil, on Flickr

September

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Mets v. Phillies - Sept 15, 2007 by thewilltorock, on Flickr

October

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Shea_Citi_10-30-2007 by sevencostanza, on Flickr

[TalB]

Here some shots that I found on Stadiumpage from 11/25.






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The Top of the Scoreboard by Ben+Sam, on Flickr


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A Look at Citi Field by Ben+Sam, on Flickr

[TalB]

http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/ap/NY_Mets_Stadium.html
Home run apple will follow New York Mets to new ballpark

by karen matthews / associated press writer

FEB 12, 2008 6:40 PM EST

NEW YORK (AP) -- The huge fiberglass apple that pops up when New York Mets players hit home runs will follow them to their new ballpark when it opens next year.

"The big home run apple is coming," the team's chief operating officer, Jeff Wilpon, said Tuesday during a media tour of Citi Field, the new stadium.

An apple is coming, at any rate. Mets officials said they did not know whether it would be the same fiberglass apple that has popped up like a Champagne cork following Mets homers since 1980.

But a well to house the apple was visible beyond center field at the new stadium, which Wilpon said is on schedule and on budget -- about $800 million.

Some 85 percent of Citi Field's structural steel is now complete, and the tiered concrete that will support the seats and stairways is in place.

The Mets broke ground on the stadium in 2006 and announced a naming deal with Citigroup, which will pay $20 million annually, or about $400 million over a 20-year contract.

Fans will enter Citi Field through the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, honoring the black Brooklyn Dodgers great who integrated baseball. Other references to the long-departed Dodgers will include an Ebbets Club Lounge and a section of Ebbets seats.

The new stadium will have a capacity of 45,000 including standing room, compared with 57,333 at Shea Stadium, the team's home since 1964. It's being built next to the old stadium.

Wilpon, son of team owner Fred Wilpon, said he won't miss Shea.

"I was at Shea Stadium groundbreaking in my mother's belly," he said. "To be here for Opening Day should be pretty exciting."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[New Jack City]

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[TalB]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/sp...ts&oref=slogin
Main Gate to Citi Field a Tribute to Robinson

By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: April 16, 2008


Uli Seit for The New York Times

Rachel Robinson still advances her husband’s goals.

About a decade ago, Sharon Robinson set down the nine values that defined her father, Jackie, and, by extension, guided her family: citizenship, commitment, courage, determination, excellence, integrity, justice, persistence and teamwork.

Those lessons will soon be memorialized on the interior walls and terrazzo floors of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, the grand entrance hall to Citi Field, the ballpark that the Mets plan to complete by the end of the year.

The rotunda, with its brick archways, is an homage to the signature architectural feature of Ebbets Field, where Robinson broke major league baseball’s color barrier in 1947 and played for 10 seasons. It will serve as the stadium’s main gate but is intended to honor the life of Robinson, whom Fred Wilpon, the Mets’ principal owner, first met when Wilpon was a 16-year-old batting-practice pitcher for the Dodgers in the early ’50s.

“At my stage in life, you’re looking for permanence, you’re looking for things that will shore up the future,” Rachel Robinson, who at 85 is still advancing her husband’s civil rights activism through a vibrant educational foundation in his name, said at a news conference at Shea Stadium to announce the plans for the rotunda.

“What the rotunda means to me is we’ll have evidence of the progress we’ve made in the past and we’re going to affect future generations,” she said. “This rotunda is not just a place. It’s a stimulant, where I hope people will feel inspired and linger, and come early to the game, so they can see the rotunda.”

Later, she walked into the rotunda for the first time. It was 61 years to the day since her husband’s first regular-season game for the Dodgers, an anniversary celebrated throughout baseball Tuesday. She looked down at the construction site, and several construction workers looked up at her in her vivid yellow jacket and applauded.

“It’s like walking into a cathedral in a way,” she said.

The Mets’ tribute to Robinson is meant to be contemplative. There will be an eight-foot blue statue of his No. 42. His values will be illustrated with enormous photos from his life to be mounted in the upper reaches of the rotunda. His famous quotation — “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives” — will be inscribed, along with the values, on a concrete strip above the archways.

“I think of it as a gathering place where people plan to come, to stand by the photos and meditate” on their lives and how they’re helping their communities, Robinson said.

Wilpon said that he expected as many as 30,000 fans a game to walk through the large plaza outside and pass through the rotunda (with its floor measuring 160 feet in diameter), and for others to come by appointment when the Mets are not playing.

“People will say, ‘I’ll meet you at the 42,’ ” he said, referring to the statue.

The rotunda has the 42 statue, but not one of Robinson, he added, “because Rachel’s idea is there are a lot of statues of Jackie and others, and sometimes the likenesses don’t look like the person.”

“Someone came up with the 42 idea, and she embraced it,” Wilpon said.

The rotunda is two or three times bigger than the one in Brooklyn that inspired it.

“But in love and feeling, it will be the same,” said Wilpon, who turns dreamy-eyed when talking about Ebbets Field.

As the rotunda evokes Robinson’s spirit, a museum is being planned at the new headquarters of the Jackie Robinson Foundation on Varick Street in TriBeCa. The foundation awards four-year scholarships of $7,500 annually to deserving minority students, and provides nurturing and other support for them.

The museum, she said, “will not just have artifacts, but it will be a gathering place.”

“Like the rotunda,” she said, “we want people to come in there, we want to have conferences and seminars.” She added: “We accept donations from everyone on every level. I’m just terrible, right? Our president is shaking her head. But we have to get there by ’09.”

It is halfway toward meeting its goal of raising $25 million, with contributions of $1.5 million each from the Mets and Citi, $1 million from the Yankees and $3 million from the Yawkey Foundation, said Leonard Coleman, the foundation’s chairman.

This week, ESPN announced that Rachel Robinson had approved the production of a theatrical film about her husband and Branch Rickey, the Dodgers’ general manager who signed him. It will be produced by ESPN Films; Robert Redford, who will play Rickey; and Baldwin/Cohen Productions.

“Like all films,” she said, “it’s taken longer than anticipated.”

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IMG_1454 by ShellyS, on Flickr

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Citi Field Looms Large by ShellyS, on Flickr

[metsfan]

Originally Posted by edsg25

Hey, New York:

a little Chicago observation and an inquiry.

First: the new stadiums for both your Mets and Yankees": CONGRATULATIONS! Looks like you hit two home runs. And what a thirll to see both go up concurrently: nobody has ever had that experience before.

Now the Chicago part (and the inquiry):

I fully understand a new Yankee Stadium borrowing from both the original and the rebuilt one on a site adjacent to all that Yankee history. The name stays "Yankee Stadium" and the site is more than respected.

Which brings us to the Mets. Different circumstances. Despite the tie to both Giants and Dodgers in the early structing of the franchise, it became apparent with the openning of Shea that this team would have its greatest pull in the two boroughs on Long Island.....and the Island itself beyond. So the Dodger connection is the stronger of the two.

The Mets had both Queens and Brooklyn as the obvious sites for a new stadium. Why on earth did they choose a suburban like parking lot setting in Queens when they could have had a more neighborhood park like Wrigley, perhaps in the downtown area of Brooklyn? New York, of all places, deserved a ball park tied to its incedible urban surroundings. Instead the Mets went the route that only (if I'm correct) the Brewers and Phillies have followed in recent years. And while both Milw and Phila built fine parks, they aren't integrated into their cities on any sense.

So what gives? May I assume that cost, availability of land, and too much of an issue of politics is the reason the see the new Mets park in such an unlikely location.....or did NYC and the Mets really want it there in the first place?

As I said, from a Chicago perspective (obviously Wrigley, but even the Cell has a degree of neighborhood...which will only improve and integrate that ball park in time), the Mets decision and its implications are confusing.

Because land in nyc comes at a premium, and they all ready have a good thing going with the site being connected to flushing meadows park & the world's fair site as well as the tennis stadiums. It makes for a really enjoyable hub for various events. They could in fact hold another world's fair here. You got the LIRR and NYC subway stop tied together via a wide boardwalk style concourse with access to the park and tennis stadiums on one end, and the baseball stadia on the other. I'm glad the west side stadium idea was scrapped. I want to listen to and watch jet planes take off while i'm being charged an arm and a leg for a hot dog. Seriously. It's an experience i guess one can only understand after going to a few games there. I agree shea is totally outdated and would need tons of improvements to keep up with the rest of baseball's venues. I will still miss it.

Brooklyn has no "obvious" location for any MLB stadium, especially one with the ease of access from manhattan that the shea/citi site has. Also, the ballparks that are crammed onto a few city blocks were built there because someone bought up the lots over time and proposed then built the stadium there a long time ago. Even the new yankee stadium is quite controversial as it's being built on a large and popular public park. Seeing as these folks live in the most poor congressional district in the country, you'd think the multi-multimillionaire baseball franchise next door would be more sensitive to the wants and needs of the locals.

- A

[PARAONE]

I always thought that Robert Moses was the main reason that Shea was built were it was. He ws the mastermind behind the worlds fair and of course wanted the stadium and fair site in an area where it had immediate expressway access.
Maybe someone with a bit more insight can shed a little light on the subject.

[cincobarrio]

correct - robert moses is one of the reasons why the mets even exist. he was stubborn as hell and wouldn't allow the dodgers to build an ebbets replacement in brooklyn, only offering flushing meadows (where shea currently stands), so the dodgers fled for the west coast. the giants left with them and the city would only have the yankees for 4 years, until the mets were created in the '62 expansion out of necessity.

[PARAONE]

crazy isn't it? how one man could have such a profound effect on the city and be accountable to no one. The new stadium looks incredible can't wait to see it in real life.... I'm planning on taking my son down to NYC to take in a game next summer, maybe we'll have to do both a Yanks and Mets game, don't think I'll ever find tickets to a subway game... do they happen every year?

[swaugh3]

Found this under Stadiums and Sport Arenas
NEW YORK CITY - Citi Field (45,000)

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Citifield by Brucenyc26, on Flickr

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Citifield by Brucenyc26, on Flickr

[desertpunk]

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanessamatthew/

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Citifield by calvorn, on Flickr

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Mets Opening Day at Citi Field April 5, 2012 by ShellyS, on Flickr

[Bogframe]

Shea the way I first knew it when I lived two stops away and after the loss of the confetti...



I took this shot from the entrance to the Fairgrounds back when both stadiums were still standing, maybe 20 yards from where the first shot was taken.