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Target Field
First-class postage stamp (continued)
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Again, the fact that a Major League ballpark was constructed on such a tight spot is remarkable. However, the bigger miracle is how many great features are crammed on top of Target Field's footprint.
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In some respects, Target Field is the opposite of Citi Field and new Busch Stadium, both of which were also designed by HOK/Populous. In both the Mets' and Cards' parks, the footprint of the structure is enormous, but you still have a wonderful feeling of intimacy inside the seating bowl. In Minneapolis, there's a tiny footprint but a refreshing feeling of spaciousness inside. This remarkable design and engineering feat was pulled off by the way the structure was built "up and out." Dave St. Peter, the president of the Twins, told the Star Tribune that Target Field "forms a muffin, so to speak. It comes up and expands out."
Let's look at the ballpark level by level, starting with the bottom. And when I say "bottom," I'm only referring to its location, not its quality.
The first thing you'll notice when you decide to go to that level is that you have to take an elevator from the main concourse, which is understandable. What's surprising, though, is that the main level is called "0" in the elevator, and the bottom level is "-2."
The "negative two" level contains the clubhouses and workout rooms for the players, as you would expect. The Twins' locker room, by the way, is 1,300 square feet larger than the one at the Metrodome. Also on this level is the Champion's Club, the ultra-exclusive dining and seating area. The elegant dining area (below left) contains the Twins' two World Series trophies, as well as an exceptional assortment of high-end dishes. You walk out into the seating area from the dining area to a section of 400 extra-large, extra-padded seats. The view you get from that section is phenomenal (below center), as the front row is only 45 feet from home plate. In the hallway between the dining and seating areas is a large window that allows you to watch Twins players using a batting tunnel (below right). This tunnel is right behind the Twins dugout, which is now on the first-base side of the field, after being on the third-base side at the Metrodome.
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Back up on the main level, the first thing you'll notice is how wide the concourse is, especially if you'd gotten used to the 22-foot-wide concourses at the Metrodome. Here, it's 40 feet wide, which is 12 feet wider than the comparable concourse at San Francisco's AT&T Park. Also, you can walk unimpeded all the way around the main level in Minneapolis, and you know how I love 360-degree concourses like this.
Another significant change from the Metrodome is that the seats at Target Field all face toward the infield ... and speaking of seats, there are 39,504 of them at the Twins's new place, which is almost 16,000 fewer than the Metrodome (although the capacity for most baseball games in the Dome was 45,423). That puts the Twins' seating capacity in the same "ballpark" (sorry for the pun) as Pittsburgh's and San Francisco's showplace facilities. All of the seats in the main bowl are theater-type seats, while aluminum benches with backs exist in the outfield near each foul pole.
Two outfield seating areas on the main level deserve mention. One is the "Overlook" section, in which the front rows of the section actually extend over the field of play in right field by eight feet. Balls that land in these seats are a home run, but ones that bounce off of the facing of the section will be in play. This could be even trickier than it sounds, because the facing of the section has the same kind of limestone blocks as the exterior (right-hand photo below). The other is the Powerball Pavilion in right-center field (center shot below). The chairbacks of the seats in this section are made of wood. The Twins point out that no new stadium seats have been made of wood since the 1940s.
There are no fewer than 13 permanent concession stands on the main level, as well as at least a dozen moveable kiosks, many of them near the right-field foul pole.
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The Club Level is the next stop on our trip upward, and is it ever special! It's too bad that many fans will never see it, because most of it is reserved for the 2,893 season-ticket holders in the Delta SKY360 Legends Club. Those special folks get to hobnob in a 32,000-square-foot lounge area that includes two atriums named for Rod Carew and Kirby Puckett (both of which feature images of their namesakes etched in wood; below right shot is of Carew) and the 573 Bar, so named because that's how many HRs were hit by Harmon Killebrew in his career. Any season-ticket holder can eat in the Metropolitan Club, which is one of the most impressive areas in the entire stadium. This restaurant, which features floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides, is at the right-field end of this level (below center).
The Legends Club seats also have wooden chairbacks, but there's a little more legroom here than in the outfield Pavilion. Down the third-base line are larger seating sections (with normal plastic backs) called the Skyline Deck. All of the seating sections in the main seating bowl of this level are identified by letters of the alphabet, while all other sections in the park carry numbers.
In the outfield areas of this level, you'll find the double-decked Home Run Porch sections in left field, the Batter's Eye section in dead center field, and the Twins' version of Denver's Rockpile, called the Grandstand, in right center field. The view from the Grandstand is shown below right.
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The uppermost level contains two seating areas, the Terrace on the same level as the upper concourse, and the View. The latter is physically separated from the Terrace so that the concourse is open to the field at many points, the same way the highest seats are at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. And like in Philly, these top two seating sections are quite a bit steeper than the lower deck, as the shot taken from down on the field below (on the left) indicates.
The concourse on the top level isn't as wide as the main level. At some points, it's only 26 feet wide, and for sold-out games, it does get crowded.
There is a structure directly down the third-base line that is reminiscent of Petco Park's Western Metal Supply Company building, which was retrofitted with bars and a rooftop experience like those across the street from Wrigley Field. Although the structure in Minneapolis (below right) isn't an old building that was retrofitted, it does provide a rooftop venue for groups or individuals to congregate. More on that in our next section. For now, suffice it to say that the team's administrative offices are contained on its lower levels. Aesthetically, I really don't like the fact that its Budweiser logo is so prominent, or maybe I should describe it as being "dominant." I know that these kinds of logos are popping up in more MLB parks (Pepsi at Citi Field, Budweiser at Fenway, the huge Coke bottle at AT&T Park), but that doesn't mean that I have to like it.
We also need to examine the canopy further. While we discussed what it looks like from the outside, I need to talk about its functionality for the interior. Yes, it contains the lights (below center), instead of the lights sitting on top of it (this is a huge move forward aesthetically). Not only that, the lights use new technology that makes them more efficient, so less energy is used and less heat is generated. Further, the outer shell of the canopy uses what Populous calls "solar reflective materials" that will help reflect the sun's heat, rather than retain it. This will also keep the fans cooler in the summer, and its enormous size will keep many of them dry when it's rainy.
The roof is only one of the many, many design elements that are classified as "sustainable." One that really captured my fancy is the way rain and run-off from watering the field are captured in 12-foot-diameter cisterns that are buried under the park's warning track. This water is then filtered and used to rinse off seating areas as part of the post-game clean-up. No other stadium has this sort of system.
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Speaking of the field, it is a marvel unto itself. The Kentucky Bluegrass sports turf is rooted in 10" of a special mixture of sand and peat. Directly below that is a grid of hoses (40 miles worth) that carries water and glycol so the temperature of the field can be regulated from below all year-round. The HERC next door helps provide heat for this purpose. Beneath these hoses is a blanket of gravel that allows excess water to drain down into a 6-inch drainage pipe.
But the most important thing is that the green stuff on this field actually grows, which the springy surface at the Metrodome certainly didn't.
The dimensions of the field, by the way, don't vary all that much from the Metrodome, but where they differ, Target Field's distances to the fences are shorter -- thanks to the size constraints of the park's site. The power alley in left center, for instance, is 377 feet, eight feet shorter than at the Dome. Interestingly, the right-field wall is only two feet closer to the plate in the Twins' new home, but it has the same 23-foot-tall wall as at their old home. Thankfully, there isn't a "Hefty bag" at the top of the wall at Target Field!
Overwhelmingly, the biggest difference between the size of the playing surface at the old and new parks is the foul territory. Populous calculated that the Metrodome had an ample 30,244 square feet of foul ground, whereas Target Field has only 22,042. Only five current MLB parks have smaller foul territories than the Twins' new park, and that means that a number of foul pop-ups will now land in the stands that last year were falling into fielders' gloves.
The batter's eye is especially pleasing at the new park, as it is made up of black spruce trees from northern Minnesota. That certainly beats a dark blue or green screen hung above the center-field fence.
All in all, a spectacular design and construction job was done on Target Field. Its interior is inferior to none of the newer parks in the sport.
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