Play Ball!

Phillies Ballpark Brings a New Game to Philadelphia

The design and construction team drew on experiences from ballparks across the country to create a new $458 million state-of-the-art home for the Phillies.

By Jim Parsons

The Philadelphia Phillies and their fans have everything they need in a Major League Baseball park with the opening of Citizens Bank Park.

Located on a 21-acre site just a home run away from the now-demolished Veterans Stadium, the $458 million, 43,500-seat facility opened April 12. It features seats and luxury boxes with terrific views of the field, multiple restaurants, family-oriented activities and a striking skyline view beyond center field. Perhaps most important the new park offers an experience built specifically around baseball.

"Venue is more important in baseball than in any other sport," said Richard Deats, the Phillies' vice president of ticket sales. "The fact that you can call it a 'park' really says it all. You can watch a pitch, chat with a neighbor or simply enjoy being at the ballpark."

Though sellouts in 70,000-seat, multipurpose Veterans Stadium were infrequent, the Phillies recognized that Citizens Bank Park would have to strike a balance of size and atmosphere to attract longtime fans and families alike.

"We're very comfortable with this size because every seat has a great view, including the rooftop bleachers atop the Ashburn Alley concession buildings," Deats said of the 50,000-sq.-ft. outfield entertainment area named for Phillies great Richie Ashburn. "It's the kind of place you want to spend a summer evening."

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Stepping up to the plate

To create a distinctively local look for Citizens Bank Park, the architect/design team of EwingCole and HOK Sport+Event+Venue drew on storied local baseball landmarks as well as recently completed ballparks in other cities.

"There is an advantage to being the 10th ballpark of this type to come on line because you have the opportunity to integrate proven elements of other facilities with innovative features that will make it distinctive to both the Phillies organization and the city of Philadelphia," said Bob McConnell, RA, EwingCole senior architect and planner. "Yet, you can go only so far in learning from the past. This is very much a 21st Century baseball facility."

Citizens Bank Park seeks to recapture the intimacy of the old parks with an openness that keeps fans constantly connected with the game. With the playing field recessed 23 ft. below grade, the precast concrete lower seating bowl rises to an open street-level concourse bordered on three sides by three-story brick and glass buildings. The buildings house the main ticket office, concessions, restaurants, retail, the Phillies' administrative offices and other services.

"We wanted fans to always know what's happening on the field, regardless of where they are in the ballpark," McConnell said. "And because the support buildings are separated at the main entry plazas, fans will get a sense of the excitement going on inside as they arrive."

Openness also defines the ballpark's cantilevered lower and upper decks, both in terms of the views and the exposed steel structural system. Rising from the cast-in-place concourse slab atop a steel pile-supported foundation, the 17- to 33-ft. cantilevered steel open-lattice trusses are spaced approximately 42.5 ft. apart to support the precast and cast-in-place concrete seating tiers.

Exposed steel is also prominent in the park's other signature elements-the 170-ft,-tall light towers flanking the entry plazas and the 2,759-sq.-ft. video display scoreboard atop the left field stands.

"The structural design is integral to the architectural design of classic ballparks," said Pradeep Patel, EwingCole project principal. "Because many bridges in the area have the same open-steel look, we were able to reference yet another recognizable element that associates the park with Philadelphia."

Digging in

The process of building the ballpark was not without some big-league construction nightmares. The complex is located atop dredge spoil from the Delaware River.

Support piling was a must for any structure, even underground water and sewer lines. The site was also in the path of now-closed 10th Street, the main route for all major utilities serving Philadelphia's south end.

"Water, sewer, telephone, high-voltage electric-you name it, we had to reroute it," said Bob Miller, vice president of L.F. Driscoll Co., Bala Cynwyd, Pa., part of a joint venture construction management team with Hunt Construction Group, Princeton, N.J. in association with Synterra Ltd. and Don Todd Associates Inc. both of Philadelphia.

The relocation process spanned the summer and fall of 2001 and required the switchover of two 66 kV electrical feeds to a Philadelphia Electric Co. substation, thereby avoiding interruptions to operations at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and a nearby food distribution center.

Because of the protracted utility relocation work, it was January 2002 before full-scale excavation could get under way. With the target depth approximately 10 ft. below the water table, a deep well and temporary dewatering system were needed to control flows of two aquifers during the five months required to remove more than 440,000 cu. yds. of material.

"A slurry wall would not have worked here because the geotechnical conditions gave us nothing to tie it to," said Phil Kowalchuk, L.F. Driscoll senior project manager. "When we were ready to begin pile-driving operations in February, we needed 18-ih. stone working mats on geotextile fabric to support the rigs."

More than 4,400 steel H-piles were then driven 80 to 110 ft. through fill, sand and gravel to a reliable substrate of dense sand and clay. The friction piles support waterproofed caps, structural foundation slabs and walls to create a "waterproof bathtub" for the field and lower seating bowl.

Tension straps on the piles ensure that the foundation can provide the needed support for the vertical loads and resist hydrostatic groundwater pressure.

The final pile was driven in May 2002, but delays with land acquisition altered the construction sequence. "We had intended to start with the utilities building along right field and work our way clockwise around the site," Miller said. "Instead, we started with what was to be the final piece-the left-field scoreboard building-and went backwards."

Construction work pressed forward through the rain- and snow-laden winter of 2002-03. "The temperatures required a lot of cold-weather concrete work," Kowalchuk said. "Fortunately, the steel erection work encountered few delays."

Batter up!

Although the Philadelphia Eagles' run through the NFL playoffs held the attention of the area's sports fans through most of autumn, each new milestone and finishing touch at Citizens Bank Park helped fuel anticipation among the Phillies faithful for the arrival of spring.

The 100,000-sq.-ft. Kentucky bluegrass and dirt field, which includes a distinctive angle along the left center field wall, was installed in early November; and the Phillies front office staff moved in to its new space in early January.

"The opening of a new ballpark obviously makes 2004 an exciting year," Deats said. "We're confident that our facility will make every year special for the fans and the team."

SIDEBAR

Veterans Stadium Faces The Final Out

For 33 years, Veterans Stadium witnessed many memorable moments in Philadelphia's long history of professional sports.

Opened on April 10, 1971, with a Phillies 4-1 win over the Montreal Expos, the city-owned "Vet" hosted three World Series (including the Phillies' 1980 championship) and two baseball All-Star games, plus NFL playoff appearances by the co-tenant Philadelphia Eagles.

Over the years, the stadium's artificial turf, multipurpose bowl configuration and other features, once considered state-of-the-art, fell out of favor with players, team owners and fans. Multiple renovations could not counter the growing perception that time had passed the Vet by, even though the facility was structurally and operationally sound.

While the Phillies' final home game in September effectively ended the Vet's service to the city, it wasn't until after the Phillies had moved into their new offices at Citizens Bank Park that demolition contractor Brandenburg Industrial Service Co., Bethlehem, Pa., could begin the full-scale stripping of seats, railings, ramps, piping and other removable components.

The final chapter of the Vet's history was written on the morning of March 21 when Demolition Dynamics Co. an implosion subcontractor from Tennessee brought the remaining concrete skeleton to the ground with a 58-second implosion sequence.

Pradeep Patel, EwingCole project principal, said he had mixed feelings about the Vet's demise. While with McCormick, Taylor & Associates of Philadelphia, he was lead structural engineer for the stadium constructed in 3.5 years for the then-staggering sum of $48 million.

"The design included a suite level cantilevered 33 ft. with steel box girders anchored by prestressing rods to the face of cast-in-place concrete girders-a rather innovative approach at the time," he said.

Patel added that the design team did not have the luxury of now-standard technology tools to design such a complicated project. "We did everything with pens, paper and slide rules," he said, laughing. "Anyone requesting a design change risked losing some friends, at least for a little while."

Memories won't be the only things to survive the Vet. The rubble will be broken up and combined with fill from the Citizens Bank Park excavation to regrade the site into a landscaped 5,500-space parking lot, complete with a painted outline of the Vet playing field and granite markers at the locations of home plate, bases and pitching mound.

SIDEBAR
The Numbers Game

Like baseball fans, design and construction professionals love statistics. Here are some facts and figures about Citizens Bank Park. (Distances in feet unless otherwise noted.)

Size - 1.15 million sq. ft.

Field Dimensions and Outfield Fence Heights
Right Field 330 13.3
Right Field Power Alley 369 13.3
Center Field 401 6
"The Angle" 409 - 385 19-12.8
Left Field Power Alley 369 8
Left Field 329 8

Distance from stands to 1st and 3rd base - 51

Distance to Veterans Stadium site - 420

Scoreboard - 2,759 sq. ft. (largest in the National League)
Also includes highest piece of steel at above the playing field (223 ft.)

Number of suites - 70
Number of water fountains - 40
Number of public restrooms - 62 (24 each for men and women; 14 family)

97,000 sq. ft. of precast panels, with 475,000 bricks
52,000 cu. yd. of foundation concrete
450,000 hand-laid bricks
11,800 pieces of structural steel, approximately 11,500 tons; 252,000 bolts
11,502 gallons of paint (including primer, intermediate and top coats)

Source: Philadelphia Phillies