As the Cubs and a state-backed sports agency negotiate a possible deal that could lead to a major overhaul of 94-year-old Wrigley Field, at least two big hurdles stand in their path: The city law that confers Chicago landmark status on Wrigley, and Mayor Richard Daley, who balked last week at the prospect of relaxing the law.
Passed in 2004 as the Cubs were gearing up for a 1,791-seat bleacher expansion, the ordinance does much more than offer protected status to such familiar elements as the red marquee sign at Clark and Addison Streets, the Moderne center-field scoreboard and the ivy-covered outfield walls.
It grants landmark protection to the ballpark’s essential contours: the exposed steel columns and beams that frame its exterior walls, its exterior roofs and roof lines, the portion of the upper-deck roof facing the playing field and the uninterrupted “sweep” of the grandstand and bleachers inside. In subjecting Wrigley’s height and girth to city regulation, the law delineates the looming field of battle over Chicago’s Field of Dreams.
Keeping the protected features in place could restrict the ability of the Cubs and the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, which wants to buy Wrigley from Tribune Co., owner of this newspaper, to load the park with revenue-generating features, including new skyboxes, and to rebuild its crumbling grandstand.
That, at least, is the thrust of calls to relax the landmark law from Tribune Co. executives and the authority’s president, former Gov. James Thompson. He has estimated that the authority, which is expected to make an offer this week to buy the ballpark, would spend from $350 million to $400 million on a Wrigley revamp.
Other projects done
Yet a close examination of the 14-page Wrigley landmark ordinance reveals another view: That the law hardly shuts the door to further changes at the ballpark.
The ordinance does not confer protected status on Wrigley’s seats and seating configuration. Nor does it protect interior concourses, where the Cubs already have put up new advertising signs. Indeed, the law states that city officials should consider the need for future changes to modernize the ballpark “to the extent such consideration is not otherwise inconsistent” with the intent of Chicago’s landmark ordinance.
City officials, who declined to discuss the specifics of the Wrigley law, argue that the provision has enough flexibility, citing the bleacher expansion and other projects carried out since the law’s passage.
“It’s kind of a lame argument that they’re making for their relaxation of the designation,” said Peter Scales, a spokesman for the Department of Planning and Development, referring to the state authority and Tribune Co.
At stake is the character of Major League Baseball’s second-oldest ballpark, after Boston’s 96-year-old Fenway Park. With its graceful curves and renowned intimacy, Wrigley forms a constant in a world of ceaseless change. Yet there is little solace in the constant of the Cubs’ century-long World Series drought.
On Wednesday morning, Wrigley was etched in sharp sunlight as commuters walked past the ballpark’s corbeled brick outer walls to the Addison Street elevated stop. The park seemed suspended in time as it awaited its next layer of architectural changes. The issue is whether the latest phase in Wrigley’s evolution will be as seamless as the ones before.
Zachary Taylor Davis, architect of the now-demolished Comiskey Park, designed Wrigley’s lower deck grandstands, which were built in 1914. The distinguished Chicago firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White shaped Wrigley’s upper deck, built in 1927 and 1928. The outfield bleachers and scoreboard were erected in 1937 and 1938 to the design of another great Chicago firm, Holabird & Root. Light towers were added in 1988; the new bleachers in 2006.
Little is known about the Cubs’ present architectural inclinations, other than that the team’s plans could turn out to be extensive.
So these questions remain:
*Wrigley has just 66 skyboxes, far fewer than new baseball stadiums, and they are tucked in a single row beneath its upper deck. Would new skyboxes be built in the same spot as the old ones? Or would new plans call for raising Wrigley’s upper deck to accommodate a second tier of skyboxes? That step could raise Wrigley’s roof beyond the height described in the landmark ordinance and force fans in upper-deck seats farther from the field.
*Tribune Co.’s earlier plans for redeveloping Wrigley called for a triangle-shaped building along Clark Street that would contain parking, a restaurant and a Cubs store. Now there is talk about putting less parking in the building in favor of more restaurants and stores. Would construction of that building ease economic pressures on the ballpark by generating fresh streams of cash?
Fenway a guide
The Cubs are working with Kansas City, Mo.-based HOK Sport, which designed the widely applauded bleacher expansion. HOK principal Joe Spear declined to comment.
Thompson has been more specific, however, suggesting to reporters that the renovation of Fenway Park would be a guide.
In the last few years, the Red Sox have raised Fenway’s seating capacity by nearly 10 percent, to roughly 39,000, by putting new seats on top of the Green Monster left-field wall and the right-field roof. The Red Sox also have pasted Fenway with advertising signs, arousing complaints from traditionalists.
Yet there is a critical difference between Fenway and Wrigley: Wrigley is an official city landmark. Fenway is considered a pending landmark. Pending landmark status is a kind of a legal limbo. It means, Boston officials said, that the Red Sox are not subject to the prescriptive design guidelines associated with landmark status, but the team must appear before the city’s landmarks commission for approval on significant changes to Fenway.
“There’s a little bit of faith going on here on both sides,” said Bryan Glascock, director of Boston’s Environment Department, which includes the landmarks commission. “We’ve got this tool that is landmarking. We can come up with guidelines that are very strict. That would foreclose the opportunity for the modernization that might be necessary, so [the Red Sox] recognize they want to be sensitive.”
It sounds nice — “a little bit of faith going on here on both sides.” Only it doesn’t sound very much like Chicago.
———-
bkamin@tribune.com
