The Impact of Two Baseball Stadiums on Their Cities—Homerun Or Strikeout? a Case Study of Dodger Stadium & Coors Field
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Paper Journal 17 The Impact of Two Baseball Stadiums on Their Cities—Homerun or Strikeout? A Case Study of Dodger Stadium & Coors Field Jack Balaguer Fairview High School 2019 State Qualifier Jack Balaguer is a junior at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado where he plays for the varsity baseball team. He has been playing baseball since he was four years old. His interest in the sport prompted him to study the effect of introducing baseball stadiums in urban communities. ________________________________________________________________________ “If you build it, they will come.” 1 respective urban redevelopment efforts, and -Field of Dreams, 1989 perhaps stadium design. The developers of Dodger Stadium insensitively imposed their vision Building it, however, raises questions, such as: for a stadium and their plan for the improvement Where? And, who is there now? When a Major of the Chavez Ravine area of Los Angeles. They League Baseball team moves to a city—bringing did not seek community input, and forced change with it a chance to root for and watch a hometown on the residents, including removing people from team for the first time—it creates a frenzy of their homes. The result was a bitter tragedy for anticipation, but also necessitates an enormous the residents of that community. The developers amount of preparation. Early in the process of of Coors Field were more sensitive to the preparing for a new baseball team, a city must community in their approach. They chose an area determine where to locate its baseball stadium. where fewer people lived and sought and Through case studies of Dodger Stadium respected input from the community. There were (1962), constructed for a relocating team, and numerous meetings of community members that Coors Filed (1995), built for a new expansion informed the developers of the residents’ team, this paper examines the impact of two concerns and offered guidelines from surrounding baseball stadiums located in urban areas. It districts for the use of the stadium. Coors Field is explores the triumphs and tragedies they brought widely regarded as a successful urban stadium to the cities of Los Angeles and Denver project. Overall, these two stadiums have left a respectively. Built over thirty years apart, there lasting impact on the people, the businesses, the were different approaches and considerations urban environments, and futures of their pertaining to urban redevelopment, community respective cities. revitalization, and population displacement when New baseball stadiums are often located the stadiums were constructed. Both stadiums in low-income areas of cities for several reasons: were constructed in the western United States, in cheap land, more empty space, and most depressed, older urban locations, and with importantly, the potential to revitalize the area dreams and designs that would lead to urban surrounding it. A stadium possesses a unique revitalization. The different situations, ability to bring new life and development to an considerations, and approaches related to area. A study conducted by Trulia, a real estate planning, locating, and building each stadium, company, in 2016, suggests that a baseball along with contrasting results, demonstrate how, stadium can dramatically increase surrounding the baseball stadium location process was residential prices.2 The revitalization of Denver’s influenced by matters as reenergized downtown “LoDo” downtown district, which occurred around areas and revitalized central business districts, Coors Field in the 1990s and 2000s, exemplifies community concerns over population the transformative effect of baseball stadiums. displacement and the quality of life issues, However, stadiums, and the revitalization investment in the future of each city and their accompanying them, do not come without August 2019 | Volume 2, Issue 1 18 National History Day in Colorado substantial downsides. What may, at first, seem to argued that handing the Dodgers the 315 acre be vacant lots, run-down neighborhoods, or Chavez Ravine was a misuse of public land.9 battered storefronts are often an integral part of a Stadium proponents countered that the direct community, and the building of a stadium can economic benefits, as well as the likely result in the destruction of these communities. revitalization of downtown Los Angeles, made the This, in turn, can lead to displacement of people land transfer acceptable. There were two legal or even entire neighborhoods. Such was the case challenges to the contract transferring Chavez of Chavez Ravine with the construction of Dodger Ravine to the Dodgers. Both succeeded at trial Stadium in the early 1960s. Many families were but lost on appeal.10 forced through eminent domain to move to make In May 1959, forced evictions of Chavez room for the construction of the stadium—to this Ravine residents began, as the city moved to day some still feel they were wronged.3 The demolish houses in the area to prepare for effects of gentrification related to sports stadium construction of the new stadium. This process development in low-income urban areas generated significant negative public sentiment, demonstrate triumph through increased economic as photographs showing people being pulled from benefits associated with the presence of a their homes and arrested caught many people’s stadium and development of the area (such as attention and sympathy.11 real estate and infrastructure), but can also lead to More than thirty years later and over tragedy through the displacement of residents 1,000 miles away, another new stadium was on from their homes and communities, as well as the horizon in Denver, Colorado. On August 8th, negative impacts and stresses on communities 1985, a new Major League Baseball Basic immediately surrounding the ballpark. Increased Agreement allowed the National League to cost of living in the area, efforts to clear low- expand by two teams. Despite the city not yet income neighborhoods to make room for having been awarded a franchise, on August 14th, construction of new developments, often result in 1990, Denver voters approved a 0.1 percent sales displacement of residents. tax to fund a baseball stadium, should Denver be awarded the team.12 The site of 20th St. and Context Blake St., in the heart of a depressed warehouse On May 28, 1957, National Baseball League district commonly known as “Lower Downtown” or owners voted to allow the Brooklyn Dodgers to “LoDo,” was selected by the Denver Metropolitan move across the country to Los Angeles, Major League Baseball Stadium District as the California.4 In luring the Dodgers to Los Angeles, site for the potential stadium on March 13, 1991. the city offered the team land to build a new On July 5th, 1991, Major League Baseball owners stadium.5 Eventually, the city selected Chavez awarded an expansion franchise to Denver.13 Ravine, located near the downtown area, as the site for the stadium, hoping the venue would Triumph attract businesses and consumers, and thereby Both Coors Field and Dodger Stadium revitalize Los Angeles’s struggling center. Chavez aesthetically and economically improved their Ravine, however, was not empty. It was home to neighborhoods and revitalized surrounding areas. a thriving, mostly Latino, community.6 Further, By the late 1950s, downtown Los Angeles had parts of Chavez Ravine were slated for a public faced decades of economic decline. It had fallen housing project to which many of the Chavez from being home to ninety percent of retail trade Ravine residents were promised preferential in the city in 1920 to only seventeen percent by rights.7 The stadium was given priority over this 1950.14 In the 1950s, Bunker Hill, a large project. With the use of Chavez Ravine for the residential neighborhood near downtown Los stadium, the housing project was never Angeles, was declared a slum under the Housing constructed. Act of 1949.15 By the 1950s, Los Angeles In 1958 there was spirited debate over the considered Chavez Ravine “blighted.”16 When proposed stadium. Eventually, in a citywide Dodger Stadium was proposed, Chavez Ravine referendum on June 3, 1958, Los Angeles citizens was made up of mostly publicly owned land, voted in favor of locating the stadium in Chavez acquired through eminent domain from the Ravine by a margin of 25,000 of the roughly previous owners—residents of a long-standing 677,000 votes cast.8 Opponents of the stadium traditional Mexican American community.17 August 2019 | Volume 2, Issue 1 Paper Journal 19 In the years following Dodger Stadium’s construction, downtown Los Angeles rapidly grew into what it is today: a thriving, modern city. Bunker Hill is an excellent example of the revitalization seen in Los Angeles following Dodger Stadium’s construction. As explained by Jerald Podair in City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles, “The Bunker Hill area is a hive of luxury apartments, stylish stores, and expensive restaurants.”18 Podair later elaborates: The planning and construction of Dodger Stadium set Los Angeles on a course of modernization and growth in which Satellite imagery of Lower Downtown Denver in 2015. downtown would matter as a site and symbol of civic, social, and cultural Institute, “In the late 1980s, Denver’s Lower ingathering and unity.19 Downtown was boarded up and blighted, largely bypassed by the downtown construction boom [to In the late 1980s, Lower Downtown Denver the south and west of LoDo]; it was the city’s skid was largely empty, occupied by remnants of a row.”23 LoDo