The city of Detroit has picked Larson Realty as its developer for the site of Tiger Stadium (and hey, shoutout from Crain’s reporter Amy Haimerl to FoS correspondent David Dyte!), which means we get more renderings of the plan to preserve the old ballfield and surround it with low-rise buildings. Not necessarily better than the last set of renderings, but more:
(There’s also an image showing the new Police Athletic League building surrounded by what appear to be Cybermen ghosts, but that’s too disturbing to include here.)
Anyway, still many details to go, but it’s looking promising that the old Tiger Stadium field will be preserved, anyway, even if it’s too late for the stadium itself. (Though it’s marginally worrisome that the flagpole isn’t visible on these.) Which is good, because I still need to get out there for a softball game.
There was a worrisome rumor yesterday that due to expected heavy use, the developers were going to use FieldTurf rather than natural grass for the outfield area. While that is probably cost effective compared to keeping a grounds crew, it just grates against the preservation aspect which is the whole point of keeping the diamond.
That would indeed be awful, and pointless to boot. While FieldTurf can be useful for fields that host sports like soccer that have cleats running back and forth across them all day, even constant baseball or softball games aren’t going to create so much wear and tear on an outfield that it’d be cost-effective to spend on FieldTurf as opposed to a groundskeeper and some grass seed.
Wow, this is so much lower density than anything proposed (or desired by the city) previously. The original RFP (issued in 1999 or 2000) wanted to encase the entire field and pretty much include every urban amenity ever included in any redevelopment anywhere ever with the exception of an aquarium; I vaguely remember a supermarket, a climbing wall, exciting “loft” spaces built in converted sections of the old structure…it was a real mess.
I guess the city finally gave up.