Dodgers to Revise New Seating Plan

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After spending $20 million during last year’s off-season to build 1,300 premium seats, Dodgers brass is now making plans to tear some of them out.


Sightline and seating-space problems with the seats along the baselines at Dodger Stadium will force some sort of modifications during the off-season, Dodgers officials admit. They just haven’t figured out exactly what to do.


“We’ve already discussed some of our possibilities for rectifying the situation for next year,” said Josh Rawitch, a team spokesman. “We want to take the time to make sure we are doing it correctly.”


About 80 season ticket holders have already demanded to be relocated the Dodgers accommodated them because fans in front were blocking their view of the action. The seats were built in front of the field-level boxes along the first and third baselines that used to be the front section. The biggest problem is that the new seats, which are several rows deep, are not built on a steep enough incline, so some fans can’t see well if there’s someone in front of them.


The team has begun to mull over as many as a dozen options, including reducing the capacity to create more space, or creating steeper slopes that would put one or more of the rows closest to the field below ground level.


A remodeling would add to the cost of last winter’s already-expensive expansion project. The seats were originally budgeted to cost $15 million, but the final price tag came in $5 million above that.


Rawitch refused to reveal all of the options being considered, and said no decision will be made until later this season. The cost to eliminate the problem won’t be known until a plan is chosen and the project is put out to bid.



Changing roster


Dodger officials aren’t saying much about the problem. The team fired its vice president for stadium operations, Doug Duennes, 16 days after the team’s April 12 home opener. (Although he was in charge of overseeing the renovations, the Dodgers denied that the seating problem played a role in his termination.)


Some personnel changes at the architecture firm that designed the baseline seats, Los Angeles-based Turner Meis & Associates, may have also played a role in the design problems.


The firm began to dissolve shortly after it won the contract because partner Dan Meis took the job as president of L.A.-based Nadel Architects. Meis said his partner, Ron Turner, was opposed to his desire to fold the firm into Nadel.


As a result, Meis said he was only involved in the presentation of the plans to McCourt and the initial design phase. Turner handled the technical aspects, such as determining the square footage needed and the arrangement of the seats, he said.


“He was always the more organizational architect and I was always the more design and aesthetic architect,” said Meis, adding that he will view the new seats for the first time this week.


Turner confirmed that Meis left the project during the early design stage, but refused to comment on the seating problems, directing questions to the Dodgers.


Dodgers owner Frank McCourt approved construction of 1,300 premium seats and 300 additional Dugout Club seats behind home plate as part of an overall plan to increase the stadium’s revenue stream.


The premium baseline seats cost $65 to $125 each, while Dugout Club seats range between $375 and $400. The team decommissioned 1,600 $6 upper reserve seats to keep the stadium’s capacity at 56,000 seats.


With 80 percent of the baseline seats and Dugout Club seats sold out for the season, the Dodgers stand to generate an additional $10 million to $13 million in revenues from ticket sales.


In order to preserve that income, the team is going to have to spend money.


“If the expectation of customers that bought that product is an unobstructed sightline, then reconstruction may be their only option,” said Joe Niemuth, design director of Kansas City-based Ellerbe Becket Inc., the architects for Turner Field in Atlanta and Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix. “It would cost more to put them in place than the first time because they would have to (first) tear them out.”



Seat options


Simply removing some of the obstructive seats would be a less-costly option in the short term but would cut into longer-term revenues.


That is not the preferred choice of McCourt, who bought a team in early 2004 after it lost a reported $112 million during the five years that News Corp. owned the team.


“If that is the only way to fix it, sure we’d take that into consideration,” said Rawitch. “But it’s our hope that we will be able to find a solution without removing some seats.”


Less-expensive alternatives include tweaking the brackets securing the seats to the concrete floor so the back rows are slightly higher than the front rows.


Outside stadium architects are a bit mystified over how the problem arose in the first place.


They often use software to create computer simulations of the seating designs, with digital fans occupying the seats to determine sightline obstruction or other problems before any concrete is poured. Or they will construct a mock-up of a portion of a section and have people sit in the seats to judge the view for themselves.


“You can demonstrate what is a clear view of the field,” said Bill Crockett, a principal at Ellerbe Becket in San Francisco. “We all turn our heads or subconsciously lean a bit particularly in a stadium. You are actually (trying to) see over the person two rows ahead of you.”


While the problem is an embarrassment, team officials point out that most fans seem content with their seats. And the problem, architects say, is similar to the one NBA teams face when they offer sections near the court that have a narrow or no slope.


“There is an expectation for a different kind of environment,” said Niemuth. “Some places they really like it because they want to be close to the action. Other places, it will generate a complaint.”

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