ENCLOSURE OF THE STADIUM

The first big decision we have to make is, do we enclose the stadium? Do we make it the equivalent of a bowl? That was the biggest decision we had to make because that is what is going to generate for Praeger to determine a lot of the layout. Are you going to make it as we wound up, sort of a half circle or are you actually going to enclose it? Bring all the decks around and enclose it, that was a major decision and it affected the stadium the rest of the way. We got into cost effectiveness and the opportunity to sell those seats, what you could scale the house for if you did that. Those seats would be occupied the least number of times and they would be very expensive seats to build if you went all the way around. That additional construction, if you think of it, a quarter of the stadium, a third of the stadium. You’re going to bring everything around. The third deck, the loge deck, the field deck, and you take the pavilions out because they are the cheapest constructions. You had 6,000 seats in the pavilion. The pavilion really fitted into the stadium concept and that was the biggest question we determined. And once that was determined, we just kept going.

Walter made the final decision in this case with input particularly from Praeger because of the engineering decisions, the soil, do we have to drive piles, and do we have to go into the land, that’s where Praeger came from. Once the cost was determined, at that point, Walter said, we will not enclose the stadium. That was the first idea that went out the window, to enclose the stadium.

SO WHAT GREAT IDEAS WERE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED, BUT NEVER IMPLEMENTED INTO DODGER STADIUM?

	An artist’s rendition of a potential bridge overpass for the parking lot at the new Dodger Stadium. The idea of a bridge overpass was never implemented as other methods to allow fans to approach the stadium were more effective.

BRIDGE OVERPASS

There were to be bridge overpasses from the parking lots to the Stadium. If people were parked there and they were parking way out, and they had to cross two rings of traffic to reach the Stadium and that would stop traffic and it became a mess. We talked about the idea about bringing people up either a ramp or a stair and up and over the traffic. That was a big idea, how do we get people in from those parking lots? We were charging a whole dollar for parking! The bridge idea was not done because we didn’t know where the people would be coming from, how many times we would sell out and where the people would be parking. 1962 was a test season to look hard at the issue but we found out we did not need a traffic bridge.

CARILLON OR CALLIOPE

This would have been in addition to the organ. We finally scrapped the idea because we asked ourselves, what would a carillon or a calliope add here?

CENTRAL CLEANING OPERATION

Cleaning the Stadium was a major issue and that was where I was coming from. I knew it would be my opportunity to clean the Stadium and how were we to do it? There was an idea in some hotels where everything goes down to a “crash room”. We had an idea to do something like this, but you need a wide aperture because it just wasn’t peanuts, they had paper cups and all types of trash. You had to have the aperture large enough to take on all types of trash and move it down from the blades to a trash room accessible for trash trucks to take it off the field. It never came about because the way the stadium was constructed you didn’t have a continuous pour and we built the stadium in sections. Each section in the stadium was separate from the other and it was not a feasible operation, but that was our goal. The idea was to push the debris into this system and pull the trash down to the trash room. We ultimately had to use manpower and clean the system by sweeping by hand and hose down the stadium.