Wrigley Field...

http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/news/story?id=4832665

Saturday, January 16, 2010
Ricketts outlines Wrigley upgrades

<HR width="100%" noShade SIZE=1>By Melissa Isaacson
ESPNChicago.com

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CHICAGO -- Among the much needed revisions to Wrigley Field, Tom Ricketts promised Saturday at the Cubs Convention one thing that would not change.

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<!-- END INLINE MODULE -->"What everyone should know is that the way you see the game from your seat is the way you're going to see the game from your seat," said the new Cubs chairman during a Q&A session at the Hilton Chicago. "What we're really talking about is trying to find ways to get better food options, better restroom facilities, get more fan-friendly things where you can take your kids to play around a little bit, just more space for people.

"It's also about preservation too. It's [almost] 100 years old. There's work that needs to be done."

The "good news," said Ricketts, is that the park structurally is in "OK shape."


"It's got legs," Ricketts said, "and it can still keep going for quite a period of time. There are parts that are going to have to be replaced sequentially over time. It can all be done in the offseason. It's going to be expensive, but I think we have 50 more years there, so we're pretty confident."

Ricketts was sympathetic but unapologetic about raising ticket prices by an average of 10 percent, saying competing for talent with teams like the Yankees and Red Sox in free agency measn the Cubs are, "going to have to be financially flexible."

The Ricketts family plans to look into the issue of brokers making it difficult to buy single-game tickets.

"We're sensitive to that," Ricketts said. "We are looking at a couple of different ways to shake up the process. We've done surveys and sometimes 25 percent of the people have bought their tickets, got them through a ticket broker. We'd like to do everything we can to make sure people get access to those tickets on a direct basis. A lot of people paid a lot more for their tickets than we ever saw, so that doesn't help us pay contracts or fix up the stadium."

Ricketts cited the importance of the Cubs improving their spring training facilities.

"Our goal is to have the best facilities in baseball," he said. "Spring training is about winning baseball games during the season and I think what has happened the last few years is other teams have leap-frogged us, so they have a better platform to get their veterans ready, to evaluate their young talent and much better facilities to rehab players who are injured.

"That said, we have a 57-year relationship with Mesa that has gone extremely well and we're respectful of that."

Todd Ricketts drew applause by saying the team was "lobbying pretty hard" for the 2014 All-Star Game to be played at Wrigley, the year of its 100th anniversary. The 2014 All-Star Game is scheduled to be played in an American League city.

http://ballparkdigest.com/201106113...s/gammons-rips-wrigley-field-defends-ricketts

Gammons rips Wrigley Field, defends Ricketts
SATURDAY, 11 JUNE 2011 10:14


Usually Peter Gammons is the smartest guy in the room when it comes to baseball, but comments he made about Wrigley Field being a "dump" and Cubs owner Tom Ricketts not knowing the true renovation price of the ballpark are ridiculous -- and are generating lots of heat in the Windy City.

Gammons, now an analyst for MLB Network, appeared on "The Mully and Hanley Show" on WSCR-AM 670 Friday morning and threw down the gauntlet, defending Ricketts against his many critics: “The problem that (Ricketts) has, and the Ricketts family has a serious issue, is they’re going to have to understand it’s not only rebuilding personnel. They got to make that ballpark livable, it’s a dump, Wrigley Field. They’re going to have to spent $200-and-something million on re-renovating Wrigley Field, do what the Boston owners did with Fenway Park. And the investment is far greater than, I think, maybe they realize. That the amount of work that Wrigley Field needs is, there’s a ton of money that has to go into rebuilding that place.”

Now, on the one hand, it's certainly true Wrigley Field needs some TLC: most buildings approaching a century in age have issues of some sort. And previous owners of the Cubs certainly acknowledged this with the original Wrigley 2014 plan, a renovation plan from HOK Sport/Populous that would address the ballpark's structural issues, widen the concourses, install a heavily revamped suite level and move team offices out of the ballpark to a triangle building next door, which would also feature parking and a green roof. The Cubs went public with the plan in 2009, but it had been in the works for at least two years (we saw a preview of it in 2007 or so). The price tag back then was in the $200 million range and was designed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Wrigley Field in 2014.

The Tribune Co. was never in a financial position to implement the plan; profits from the Cubs were diverted to corporate coffers to cover losses incurred by newspaper and media operations. But the plan was continually updated; the triangle building lost its green roof in favor of group areas and parking, and other parts of the plan, including the addition of a dining spot behind the iconic center-field scoreboard, were implemented. When Tom Ricketts was negotiating to buy the Cubs -- negotiations that took over than a year to complete -- the Wrigley 2014 plan certainly was discussed. In fact, the team had already agreed to ballpark improvements as a condition of adding 1,800 seats to the Wrigley Field bleachers. And when Ricketts was announced as owner of the team, he referred to implementation of the specifics of the Wrigley 2014 project as a goal for the team.

So for Peter Gammons to insinuate that Ricketts came into ownership of the Cubs without a knowledge of what it would take to fix up Wrigley Field is simply ridiculous: Ricketts knew every step of the way about everything in the ballpark requiring attention. Indeed, the issue isn't Wrigley: it's the fact that Ricketts appears to be in over his head as owner of the Cubs. Fans expected a return to family ownership -- i.e., committed ownership that didn't see the historic franchise as simply a line item in an annual report -- but instead they've seen a constant stream of requests for public money, whether it's been tax dollars to fix up Wrigley Field or city funding of a new spring-training complex. Supposedly deep pockets have proven to be suspiciously thin, and the Cubs are reportedly one of nine MLB teams to be in violation of MLB's debt rules. Declining attendance surely doesn't help matters, either. The Cubs are a national treasure and a proven money mill, but by focusing so much on public assistance without much of a plan to improve the team's on-field performance, Ricketts has already managed to mess up what had become automatic sellouts at the Friendly Confines while alienating fans who really do care about the team and its historic home.

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Tags:
Chicago CubsFriendly ConfinesImprovementsPeter GammonsRenovationsThe Mully And Hanley ShowTom RickettsWrigley 2014Wrigley FieldWscr Am 670
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