Not a full year after I started this blog, my day job at the time asked me to manage a huge project in Australia. The project would require planning first in Brisbane, where we did a pilot, then Sydney, where if we got telecom certification, we would support a nationwide rollout. I spent two months in Brisbane, a lovely and growing city which in 2006 had already gotten the moniker “BrisVegas” for its casinos on the riverfront. After we successfully completed the pilot, I went back home to California, where I stepped off a plane and went to a friend’s wedding. Barely two weeks later, I went to Sydney, where I spent several months until I received a fateful call that informed me that my mother was getting treatment for esophageal cancer. I wrapped my affairs in Sydney and left for home a few days later.
During the first part of that winter in Sydney, I would listen to A’s night games during the Sydney mornings thanks the 18-hour time difference. Those who remember the 2006 season know that the team was mostly keeping its head above water those first three months and didn’t get hot until August thanks to Barry Zito, Dan Haren, Frank Thomas, and wildcard Milton Bradley. That left the nights to explore Sydney’s nightlife. Beer, barramundi, and the occasional shawarma are how I spent many of those nights.
I spent a great deal of time in the Sydney Harbour area. After my first flight into SYD, my Australian host took a bunch of us to The Lord Nelson, a brewery and hotel in The Rocks neighborhood at the foot of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. After dinner and some adult beverages we went to Circular Quay, Sydney’s ferry terminal. Then we headed up to the Sydney Opera House, which sits on Bennelong Point, essentially a pier. I thought I might be able to get a good view of it from the Sydney Harbour Bridge as we left the area. Unfortunately, the northbound traffic is on the west side of the bridge, which meant any views of the roughly 4-acre complex were blocked as we whizzed past it. Even on the southbound (east) side is somewhat subdued because the Opera House’s dual auditoriums are not actually that large or imposing. Each theater holds around 2,000 patrons, the largest measures 360 feet-by-170 feet and 200 feet high. For me the best view of the Opera House came from a ferry trip south from Neutral Bay in North Sydney to Circular Quay, which brought the boat close enough to practically kiss the auditoriums.
When the A’s updated ballpark renderings were (accidentally) released earlier this week, I immediately saw the Sydney Opera House resemblance. I reserved comment on it because I knew that much of this week would be a litany of hot takes, mostly uninformed and lacking context. So here are a few observations.
1. The Sydney Opera House comparisons are apt but are likely to recede over time if/when this opens. The Opera House is striking because it sits alone on the waterfront. The ballpark will be yet another loud edifice on The Strip, competing for attention with everything else. Materials will be different too. The Opera House is made of several precast concrete shells, whereas the ballpark’s roof will be a fabric or tensile structure (ETFE). Most importantly, while the Opera House complex is on four acres and the auditoriums take up a fraction of that, the ballpark will cover 9 acres all by itself. That’s important because the whole point of BIG’s roof treatment is to make a domed ballpark look less like a dome. Judging from the initial feedback, BIG and the A’s are succeeding on this front. The last thing anyone wanted to see is for something like a monolith like the Astrodome (9.5 acres) or the Kingdome (9 acres) or Tropicana Field (also 9 acres). The most interesting about the Sydney Opera House is that it was designed by Jørn Utzon, a Danish architect who won a worldwide competition. If you think that had an impact on countryman Bjarke Ingels, you would be correct. So while Ingels has sort of brushed off the comparisons to an extent, he knows that his vision is working because we’re not talking about a dumpy dome, or an expensive gimmick like a retractable roof. We’re talking about something futuristic, an inviting stadium that only Ingels himself could summon. Or perhaps, his hero Utzon.
That said, there’s no chance a ballpark will have the same visual impact as one of the great works of modern architecture, especially if it’s surrounded by the kind of gaudy, kitschy buildings littering the Strip. Ingels will have to settle for putting something striking on one of the busiest intersections in the world.
2. My previous observation that the circular Howard Terminal footprint was ported over to the Tropicana casino site appears to be correct. I’d even go so far as to say that as Howard Terminal stalled, the Vegas work on both the political and design fronts accelerated. The one big remaining issue was to figure out if someone could bring in a retractable roof on budget and within the 9-acre footprint. Not getting any takers, BIG won the “competition” by default. It’s possible that the competition was “rigged” for BIG, the same way the Coliseum development bidding was “rigged” for AASEG.
3. A cable-net window that BIG claims will be the largest in the world will provide the entry from left-centerfield. Well, mostly. There will be doors, which will allow the A’s to create a massive standing room general admission plaza like the Cowboys have at AT&T Stadium. Is that something that will work for baseball? Considering how much the actual seats are guaranteed to be sold at a premium, we’re going to find out that the cheap seats are not seats at all, and how many fans are willing to pay for the SRO scene at a MLB game.
4. The scoreboard in right field looks like a screen cap of a scoreboard mockup that someone asked for at the last minute. The previous Vegas ballpark concept was similarly plagued by a tacked on scoreboard. The technology to hang a scoreboard on a piece of fabric doesn’t exist yet, so this isn’t feasible. Instead it’ll be a normally mounted scoreboard above the RF wall. Will it be 18,000 square feet as Dave Kaval claims? Considering that the scoreboard would be more than twice the size of Fenway’s Green Monster, it doesn’t seem likely. Hanging it at an angle is something that’s already familiar in arenas, though it may not work within the context of a ballpark. The use of fabric as a projection surface for additional video elements is also feasible. That kind of tech has come a long way using lasers. Obviously, there are advertising opportunities for that tech. I recently went through all my pictures of domed stadia and found that the ceilings of most examples are so cluttered that any kind of projection is impossible. That makes me curious about what BIG and its contractors intend to implement that would declutter the ceiling and hide much of the infrastructure. If you look closely at the image inside the ballpark, you’ll see what looks like trusses in the pennant-like panels. If a truss structure is going to be used, what materials will it be made of? Will it be on the roof (outer) side of the panel, or an inside separate roof and ceiling panels? Plus, how much transparency and translucency will they use? Ingels cited the expense of a retractable roof as a factor that will be mitigated, but if the fixed roof is very complex in terms of design and materials, how much of an impact will a complex fixed roof make?
5. In an interview with Evan Drellich of The Athletic, Ingels noted that elements of the roof deck concept from Howard Terminal made it to the Vegas ballpark. The Review-Journal’s Mick Akers got additional images that show the deck as an extended rim from which the roof is anchored. Arches extend from the anchor points of the roof panels. Since the roof panels overlap, they create additional spaces – probably premium club – on the outside of that the concourse. In proper desert fashion, these spaces should include a bunch of misting equipment to keep it comfortable. There is an open question of what the aerial view above the ballpark will be, especially behind home plate. Since there won’t be a lot of glass, there’s a danger of the angle looking quite drab. Extending the deck and introducing some greenery back there can help soften it up to a limited degree. Here in Phoenix, the home plate side of Chase Field is almost entirely inaccessible to the public except for a pedestrian bridge that extends across some railroad tracks and links to a parking garage to the south.
6. The most frequent hot take was about how the stadium will bake like an oven because of the west-facing cable-net window and portal. Ingels and Dave Kaval countered that the ballpark doesn’t get any direct sunlight due to the fixed roof and the northern orientation. I checked this on Google Earth, simulating the setting sun during this year’s summer solstice on June 20. As expected, the sunset peaks into view beyond the New York New York casino before dropping out of sight. When I posted the screenshots of that simulation, I was challenged to see what would happen at 5 PM for a nationally televised game or a postseason game. Those images failed to bring the sun in at all due to it being too high in the sky for it to affect the batter or the field.
Many of the comments I’ve seen come from the perspective of frequent visitors of the Coliseum. The Coli’s uniquely low stadium rim and vomitory placement allows sun to stream in during some early evening games. Having been to all of the other MLB parks, I can attest to this not being a problem elsewhere because in other parks the grandstand and concourse behind home plate create a huge, high wall to block out the sun. As this ballpark is domed, there won’t be many angles for direct sunlight to come through. BIG plans a series of clerestories to bring in indirect natural light, which may be affected by the rest of the ceiling/roof structure as this hasn’t paid dividends in most other domed ballparks.
Globe Life Field with clerestories
As more details come in, I’ll comment more. I’ll refrain from participating in the hot take fest except some occasional “well actuallys” because, well, someone has to fact check the irrationality.
newballpark.org 
What if the dome disintegrates???
Unless there is a nuclear blast, that’s probably not happening.
I want to like it, but right now I just can’t. The nighttime pic looks cool, but the rest? Maybe it’ll grow on me over time, especially when more refined renderings come along, as well as how it fits in with surrounding future development.
The cable net window that gives a view of the strip is all that I cared about and it looks like they’re succeeding on that front. I had no idea that it was called “cable net” or that “cable net windowing” even existed but this looks good. I was thinking of something similar to Dan Gilbert’s glass wall at his arena in Cleveland but this works better
Also, did you see this. Your “broke mid tier city” tweet got published in this RJ article
https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/athletics/spherical-armadillo-or-sydney-opera-house-as-stadium-gets-mixed-reviews-3012534/?utm_campaign=widget&utm_medium=latest&utm_source=post_3011874&utm_term=%E2%80%98Spherical%20armadillo%E2%80%99%20or%20Sydney%20Opera%20House%3F%20A%E2%80%99s%20stadium%20gets%20mixed%20reviews
JohnsPlanB is in there as well
Good diverse sample of opinions