This past weekend, the Madison Mallards, a baseball team consisting of college athletes, revealed what their new stadium will look like. The stadium is in the same location, will be called the same (Warner Park), but since it is a smaller venue, they were basically able to redo the whole thing in one offseason.
The new stadium will have a concourse where people can walk without disturbing other fans, stadium seating, and a roof. A roof? No, not the roof you might see at a major league baseball stadium. This is just a small roof to cover about 25% of the seats, giving those fans relief from the sun and potential summertime rains.
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| the roof behind home plate |
Many major league teams now have stadiums with retractable roofs. Retractable roofs have the ability to be either open or closed, depending on the weather conditions. A roof is valuable because it can guarantee a game will be played rain or shine. If it's raining, just close the roof. They do that at Seattle's Safeco Field. Since the Seattle market covers such a large area, it helps you sell tickets to a Seattle baseball game to someone from Montana, because that person can drive to Seattle knowing they will see a game.
I'm not sure having a roof behind home plate at Warner Park in Madison, WI will make much of a difference.
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| Safeco Field in Seattle (at bottom) |
Cool. They should put solar panels in their new roof, and then use the energy to power the lights at night. That would be a very Madison-like thing to do.
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