April 14, 2004

White Sox renovations get one thumb up

Initial reviews of the Chicago White Sox' newly renovated U.S. Cellular Field is that, as Calvin Trillin's daughters would say, it's better than a carrot. Among the comments on the stadium's new look, which lopped off eight rows of seats from the back of the sky-high upper deck and added a small roof: "When you see something over your head, you feel more secure." "[It] looks better from the expressway." "It's [still] hard to see the pitches from up here." "It looks like old Comiskey." "I wish we had a dome." And from the Chicago Tribune's architecture critic: "It's a bit more intimate, a lot less sterile and certainly a more attractive urban presence to drivers on the Dan Ryan Expressway." (If you want to see what it looks like and don't drive on the Dan Ryan much, there's a photo gallery here.)

The redesign of what had been called Comiskey Park (not to be confused with the original Comiskey Park, which until its demolition in 1991 was baseball's oldest park) were financed by selling naming rights for $68 million, none of which money will go to the state of Illinois, which built and owns the structure.