New Gilbert Sports Complex Fosters Big League Dreams

By Scott Blair

The $33 million Big League Dreams Sports Park in Gilbert opens this fall with eight small-scale recreations of famous ballparks from around the country.

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A slice of Red Sox history has arrived in Gilbert.

Along with it come historic icons from the Yankees, Chicago Cubs and even Arizona’s own Diamondbacks.

The project is Big League Dreams Sports Park, which recreates eight famous baseball stadiums on a 65-acre site at Power and Elliott roads that will accommodate both youth and adult leagues.

Design-build contractor Mortenson Construction’s Chandler office broke ground on the park in July 2006 and completed the project last month.

The town entered into a partnership with Big League Dreams, a Chino Hills, Calif.-based developer and operations company that has built six other similar parks throughout California and Texas and has several more in design and construction.

“The council undertook an almost year-long evaluation of parks and recreation services,” says George Pettit, Gilbert’s town manager. “We needed an alternative to the traditional subsidized recreation activities such as little league and softball leagues to see if there was a better partnership that we could develop that wouldn’t cost the taxpayers as much money.”

While the town had the capital funds to build recreation facilities, “the underlying issue became the long-term maintenance and operating costs,” he says. Big League Dreams will handle those aspects as part of the agreement while Gilbert is responsible for the $33 million construction cost.

The park’s eight fields are divided into two four-leaf clover-like shapes. Each field is a scaled-down version of a real ballpark, including Anaheim’s Angel Stadium, Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field. Several historic parks are also included, including Polo Grounds, the former home of the New York Giants, and Ebbets Field, the Brooklyn Dodgers legendary home.

While similar Big League Dreams parks have been built before, the Gilbert facility is the largest and features many unique regional touches.

“Using the previous parks as a minor guideline, we were then able to develop this park to really reflect the unique character of Gilbert,” says Paul Krucko, AIA, principal with the project’s Phoenix-based architect, Studio4 Design. CMX’s Chandler office acted as the civil engineer.

The most striking local touch is the addition of a replica of Arizona’s own Chase Field.

To create scale versions of such recognizable buildings, the designers selected the iconic architectural elements and colors from the actual ballparks, such as the 37-ft left field wall at Fenway Park known as the ‘Green Monster’ or the clock at Chase Field. “Then you have to scale those down to a meaningful relationship of scale versus the actual elements themselves,” Krucko says. “Color tends to reinforce that.”

For example, the real Chase Field features brick and green metal-panel cladding. On the scale replica, this is accomplished with paint color.

The outfield walls are comprised of steel frames set into caisson foundations. Computer-generated graphics depict fans sitting in the stands, printed on vinyl and stretched over the steel frame.

“This is a system that they have used at all the parks, and it recreates that whole atmosphere and ambience of a large ballpark with the crowd watching you play baseball,” Krucko says.

“We used building information modeling for the outfield walls, which was a huge help,” says Curtis McFarland, Mortenson’s project manager. “It allowed us to figure out where caissons needed to be in relation to the berms and how the steel was going to be put together.”

Each ballpark features seating for 190 with fabric sunshades and misting systems. Dugouts are recessed similar to real ballparks.

In the center of each clover leaf is a raised, 10,650-sq-ft stadium club housing a restaurant and bar. “The club is above the fields so you could stand at the center and see all four ballfields,” McFarland says.

The park isn’t just for baseball. At the center of the park is a 26,000-sq-ft multi-sports pavilion with grandstand seating for 92 spectators. The pre-engineered metal building has an EIFS and metal-siding exterior.

“It looks like a big barn,” says Paul Mood, Gilbert’s capital project administrator. “It dominates the site.”

While the ballparks feature natural grass, the pavilion uses artificial turf.

“All the drainage is on-site,” McFarland says. “Floodwater drains to onsite retention basins, and the park will use reclaimed water for all its irrigation.”

As part of the agreement between the town of Gilbert and Big League Dreams, the park will offer free admission during weekdays, and will charge users a small fee during weekends and evenings.

While the unique public-private partnership has provided the team with many advantages, there were some challenges as well, particularly related to the alternative delivery method, Pettit says.

“Because of their somewhat limited design-build experience, we’ve had some challenges with Big League Dreams in particular trying to get some changes made at the end of the process rather than the beginning, and that’s because they were always using the design-bid-build in other communities,” he says.

Key Players

Owner: Town of Gilbert
Operator: Big League Dreams
General Contractor: Mortenson Construction
Architect: Studio4 Design
Engineer: CMX Engineers
Construction Manager: Kitchell CEM
Subcontractors: Corbins Electric; Division 9; HACI; Schuck & Sons; Siteworks

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