At the Cubs convention, the team gave fans a short glimpse of a odd sketch of the improvements that will contain a "party patio."
The photo shows the scaffolding at the first level or stage of construction: the scoreboard level. The new 16' tall electronic scoreboard is the center piece for new revenue (advertising). But at what cost?
There has been very little follow-up in the local press about this reconstruction project, other than the Sun-Times story that the team forgot to run it by the city or to pull construction permits. Traditional fans were aghast at the notion that the symmetry of Wrigley Field would be destroyed by a new vertical facade.
But fans have to understand that owner Tom Ricketts is obsessed with the Red Sox. So much so he overpaid and hired Theo Epstein and his crew. So much so that he wants to have his own "Green Monster" seats at his ball park. This whole right field complex is only going to increase seating by 43 patrons. It seems like an awful lot of money spent to increase the fan experience by 43 with a new scoreboard competing with the iconic manual center field scoreboard.
But look closely at the photo from center field. The new RF complex is going to rise well above what is shown. By even at the lower scaffold level, the current left field corner seats will be blocked from viewing center field. The expensive lower field box section 142 stops just at the foul pole, but it is the terrace boxes, Section 242, that appear to be now half obstructed view seating. Who creates a new seating project that creates probably 150 obstructed view seats in the process? The Cubs.
Bringing the "roof top" experience into Wrigley Field itself is not going to help sell the adjacent Section 242 seats to church, pack or civic lodge group sales if their traditional terrace section view is now blocked. The average ticket price in Section 242 was $35. If you lose 150 seats due to obstruction, that is $5,250 per game. If you are adding 43 seats to the RF bleachers at $100 premium, that is only $4,300 per game. The numbers only balance out if the party deck averages 53 attendees per game, something that was scarce last year in that old "family" bleacher section.
And how long with the new Wrigley vertigo wall experience, excitement last? Four, five innings??
But as the management said, it is about being able to mill around the long row of your 29 other friends without the confined space of traditional row seating. With corporations and groups cutting back on group outings, how many games will the party area be basically vacant?
Also, unanswered is how the new vertical wall will affect play. Is the scoreboard in play, meaning that former HRs into the bleacher seats will now bounce off the scoreboard for long singles? How will a wall affect the aerodynamics of the northerly, and westerly winds as the hit this new structure? We believe that it will have an effect of pushing back fly balls back towards home plate. Which would give the home team that is stocking up on left handed pull hitters a home field disadvantage.
It just does not seem that this new Wrigley project was thought out in detail. It was like the Northwestern football game at Wrigley. When the teams showed up to play, they could only use half of the field because one end zone ran into the bleacher wall and was considered unsafe.
No one knows for sure, but it looks like the new structure will also partially block the view of the two roof tops behind it on Sheffield. Whether that will cause some neighbor friction, is unknown. But it cannot be helpful that the Cubs are aggressively trying to take away roof top customers.
So as it stands, we will see a huge wall go up in the RF bleacher corner, dramatically changing the historic look and playing conditions of the ball park, and create possibly hundreds of obstructed view seats in the process, all for a team projected to win only 70 games in 2012.
