Toronto Rogers Centre Renovations | ?m | ?s | Toronto Blue Jays | Populous

architecture fan said:
A retro look does not belong at the Rogers Center; if a majority of baseball fans like the retro look (not sure why baseball fans would require that, certainly not good in the year 2022) then Rogers made a mistake in having bought the SkyDome. The steps taken so far are not good Modern, like the uninspired exterior paving around the exterior. So Modern is not the issue, it's the poor design decisions that are to blame. Hire a top quality design firm for a high quality, contemporary, cohesive, exciting renovation.
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Rogers makes lots of mistakes. their ridiculously expensive NHL broadcast deal is one of them. Buying the skydome is not. they bought it for $25MM and they owned the team and the channels it airs on. That's a no brainer decision to make.

i'm not sure why Retro is not good in 2022 but all the same fans don't require a retro, but it's nice to be in one. Camden Yards and PNC Park are two of the nicest parks i've been to. The new Yankee stadium which is incredibly modern just felt bleh and corporate and sucked the soul out of you. While this is baseball, i went to the Chase Centre in 2020 for a Warriors game and it was the same. It's nice and comfortable but lacks any sort of character.

a lot of these retro ballparks (even if they aren't truly historic) have a level of charm to them that people love. a renovation will not make the Rogers Centre retro so they shouldn't attempt it, but they could try to bring in some elements to make it cozier. If they were to build a new stadium from the ground up, i think that's where you consider the retro design. but that's a non-issue so there's no point in debating that part.
 
architecture fan said:
A retro look does not belong at the Rogers Center; if a majority of baseball fans like the retro look (not sure why baseball fans would require that, certainly not good in the year 2022) then Rogers made a mistake in having bought the SkyDome. The steps taken so far are not good Modern, like the uninspired exterior paving around the exterior. So Modern is not the issue, it's the poor design decisions that are to blame. Hire a top quality design firm for a high quality, contemporary, cohesive, exciting renovation.
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See the above post. It's bang on.
 
Those renders of the Trop, showing fans in the stands, are pretty funny.

LED lighting is everywhere now and, yeah, can probably be used in Rogers Centre in some way (but let's not steal Tampa's catwalks).

As for the architecture discussion - here's the thing: you can't make it retro. You can't just clad it in brick and try to disguise what it is. You also can't really do a lot to make it look 21st Century modern. It's a late-80s Modernist (not MODERN) design. It is what it is. You can do things to MODERNIZE it, certainly. They've hung a lot of banners that mitigate the grey concrete look, for starters. You could certainly use LED lighting to throw a lot of blue and red and white on it, both inside and out too. The roof is what it is but I have fingers crossed they can do glass or something to bring in some light. Even without that, there must be something they can do to make the industrial-grey of the roof interior look a bit better.

You can maybe also knock out walls to open the concourse up to the outside in certain areas.

But you can't shoehorn a retro look in at this point, I agree. And whatever 2021 architecture may end up getting called a few years from now, you can't do much there either. You have to be realistic about what retrofitting a 1985-ish design really looks like.
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
Those renders of the Trop, showing fans in the stands, are pretty funny.

As for the architecture discussion - here's the thing: you can't make it retro. You can't just clad it in brick and try to disguise what it is.
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Rendering fans into the stands is probably the only way that Tampa can get fans into the stands. 😄😄

I agree that you can just slap on brick and call it retro, but you can refresh the exterior with brick or panels/siding. A feature wall or elevation could be done with the precast brick, or ACM panel to give the exterior new life and make it more welcoming.
But again, on a $250 million budget, I assume most of the cash is going to be spent on the interior to make the fan experience better.
 
I feel like a translucent roof is a pipe dream at this point. I don't even know how feasible it is to do that work in one off-season.

If we want natural light inside by removing some portion of the 500 level walls, replacing them with glazing it also seems like unrealistic work. But there would still need to be a rail/track system for the roof. And the biggest problem with the idea is that the hotel covers the entirety of the outfield walls. So the demolition would have to occur further down the baselines, which would also be serious work based on the concourse. The building actually extends down the baselines beyond the outfield in both LF and RF. This can be seen if you look at it in Google Earth.
 
The roof doesn't particularly affect functionality/gameplay the way, say, new seating does. In theory, if you can put in new panels (Translucent, clear, whatever), no reason it can be done bit by bit through the season or over a couple of off-seasons. They also don't have to do all 4 panels; even just 2 and 3 would make a big difference.

And I think you're right about the issues letting in light from the north... I'd still like to see options. Could be too much to hope for.

And I also agree about the cladding - I just think it should be something complementary, not slapping brick up to make some lame, faux-retro facade that doesn't work otherwise.
 
C-mac said:
No offence but going modern is what got them in this mess in the first place. People love the classic ball park feel. They've got to try and make it feel that way as much as they can.
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They were riding the modern wave. Then it unexpectedly went classic soon after SkyDome opened. And trends could conceivably swing back the other way too.
 
Translude15 said:
Well, if it makes people feel any better, the same architectural firm that designed Camden Yards and PNC Park will also be overseeing this reno.

Populous Holdings - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Populous has a phenomenal track record with MLB parks relative to the other firm that designed this hot pile of garbage:

en.wikipedia.org

Globe Life Field - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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They did a great job at Nationals Park. Visited it a week after went to a game at Wrigley, and somehow the stadium is much much larger, and yet felt nearly as intimate, and not a retro park.
 
Given how long it takes to design and build stadiums it's probably more accurate to say the shift happened while the dome was being developed; not after.

Before Camden Yards, Populous (then HOK) built the Blue Jays "other home stadium," Sahlen Field (then Pilot Field) in Buffalo, almost like a test for a retro design. It has some post-modern elements and is more concrete than brick but it's what got the ball rolling and what got them hired in Baltimore. They broke ground in July 1986, three months ahead of SkyDome.

Hindsight is 20/20 and there's no point faulting the dome, which was consciously designed as an all-purpose stadium and which is now "regressing" into a baseball (at least, non-football) stadium. Baseball has been rolling with variations on the retro thing for a long time and while it could swing the other way, I doubt they'll come back to something modernist, like we have. In the USA, of course, you have massive football and baseball stadiums sitting right next to each other, sometimes amid massive fields of parking. We're not going to do that here.

So, just like any fashion or design element, architecture goes through phases. There are ways to improve the dome without compromising its inherent character and without dressing it up as something that it isn't.

(Just adding this great quote from the Vancouver Sun, in 1989, direct from Wikpedia. It shows that even at the time, people saw the "mistake" Toronto had made...[again, subject to what I said earlier about the very concious decision not to build a baseball-only stadium, like Buffalo's):

I have seen the future of baseball and it looks a lot like the past. The best new ballpark in North America looks like the best old ballpark in North America. Forget SkyDome. Pilot Field, home to the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons baseball club, makes Toronto's newest toy look like a crass gimmick. It dares to offer the revolutionary concept of playing baseball on grass, open to the elements. And it does it in the prettiest playground in the game. Built last year for $42 million, (compared to SkyDome's half-billion), Pilot Field resembles a turn-of-the-century ballpark complete with soaring archways, exposed girders, palladian windows, and a copper-green metal roof above the stands topped with two cupolas. Its concrete facade has been "rusticated" to resemble the limestone walls of the heritage buildings in the downtown neighborhood that surround it. Pilot Field is so wildly popular with the citizens of Buffalo that it has helped rejuvenate Buffalo's once-decaying downtown. It was a matter of philosophy. Toronto built an edifice: Buffalo embraced an idea. Toronto elevated technology over the game: Buffalo honored the past. Buffalo ended up with the better ballpark. It may be the best ballpark built since the construction of the game's holy triumvirate - Wrigley, Fenway and Briggs.[
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p.s. Just came across this article which seems relevant:
buffalonews.com

Jeff Simon: Sahlen Field may get its turn in the spotlight

Tentatively scheduled for a Blue Jays home opener Aug. 11, the "simple, unpretentious, unroofed" Sahlen Field is getting gussied up in a Covid-19 era that is teaching everybody to go
buffalonews.com buffalonews.com
 
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Whenever we do end up building a stadium, I'd personally love if they went with either of these directions;
  • More traditional but with a Canadian twist. Take some inspiration from prominent Canadian architecture like the chateau style CP hotels
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  • Something of a mix of traditional structure but built with sustainable materials and heavy uses of timber.

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Jayomatic said:
Whenever we do end up building a stadium, I'd personally love if they went with either of these directions;
  • More traditional but with a Canadian twist. Take some inspiration from prominent Canadian architecture like the chateau style CP hotels
View attachment 373456
  • Something of a mix of traditional structure but built with sustainable materials and heavy uses of timber.

  1. View attachment 373450View attachment 373451
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Both not practical unfortunately. They would look good but that is about it.


Timber stadiums likely would not meet fire code while giving stadiums a Canadian twist is expensive from a design and build perspective. Stone carving is not cheap.
 
I believe the translucent roof panel problem was already talked about much earlier in this discussion, but for reference, here's some info on why they don't use them: https://groovyhistory.com/houston-astrodome
"At first the team played on grass, utilizing the translucent panels to keep the field green. Unfortunately, the engineers involved failed to take into account the vision of outfielders. During afternoon games the translucent panels would blind players, adding more than a degree of difficulty in catching fly balls."

TJ O'Pootertoot said:
The roof doesn't particularly affect functionality/gameplay the way, say, new seating does. In theory, if you can put in new panels (Translucent, clear, whatever), no reason it can be done bit by bit through the season or over a couple of off-seasons. They also don't have to do all 4 panels; even just 2 and 3 would make a big difference.

And I think you're right about the issues letting in light from the north... I'd still like to see options. Could be too much to hope for.

And I also agree about the cladding - I just think it should be something complementary, not slapping brick up to make some lame, faux-retro facade that doesn't work otherwise.
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Translude15 said:
Interested in seeing how the new scoreboard reno turns out. Looks like the new screen will be larger and some of the LED screens will be replaced. Perhaps a new fan area will be constructed in that space as well.

In terms of the $250MM reno plans, I'd say this pic is indicative that substantial components of the facility can be gutted and rebuilt, especially the outfield and hotel areas. As others have pointed out, the 100 level seating bowl will likely be the focus of the renovations with a new orientation, seating replacements (cupholders, please!), premium seating and areas underneath the bowl a la Scotiabank.

An Athletic article a few years back mentioned the possibility of reorienting the field to face NE towards the CN Tower which would allow for a new outfield plaza/entrance on the NE side of the stadium. Doing so would require reorienting the roof as well which was apparently investigated. That would likely be cost prohibitive IMO. New 100 level seating and fan spaces is still a major plus as both are long overdue. Our lower bowl seating is some of the worst in the Majors.
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if they are going to renovate the hotel area they are gonna spend a decent chunk of the $250MM budget just buying the hotel from its owners.
 
CityRider said:
I believe the translucent roof panel problem was already talked about much earlier in this discussion, but for reference, here's some info on why they don't use them: https://groovyhistory.com/houston-astrodome
"At first the team played on grass, utilizing the translucent panels to keep the field green. Unfortunately, the engineers involved failed to take into account the vision of outfielders. During afternoon games the translucent panels would blind players, adding more than a degree of difficulty in catching fly balls."
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I wonder how feasible is it to stretch a thin white fabric across the interior steel supports to make the interior more friendly less industrial. Projections and lights onto the ceiling would also pop a lot more across a smooth white surface.

Perhaps not as show-stopping as a transparent roof but with the budget laid out, probably more attainable
 
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