Revamped Stadium to Put Fans Close to Action
Squeezing seating bowl within colonnades compels closeness
by Jeffrey Steele

Intimacy in professional athletic stadiums? You bet.

Look at baseball's beloved Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. There's the retro-look Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, where intimacy was part of the 1980s construction plan.

Since then, putting fans close to the action has been part of every new stadium design, from baseball's Pac Bell Park in San Francisco to the National Basketball Association's Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

And now look at the new Soldier Field. "Intimate" Soldier Field.

It's likely that no National Football League stadium will match the level of close-to-the-sidelines intimacy promised by the designers and builders of the palace for the Chicago Bears.

A Shrine to Intimacy

Actually, they had no choice but to make Soldier Field a shrine to intimacy, said Alice Hoffman, president of Chicago's Hoffman Management Partners LLC, the developer's representative for the Chicago Bears.

Because the bowl's new seating was to fit within the existing colonnades, all the suites and clubs had to be placed on the east side of the stadium, Hoffman added. By contrast, most NFL stadiums have suites around the entire circumference of the field.

"The colonnades force intimacy because they're so close together, on the east and west sides," she said. "In fact, our bowl is an average of 60 ft. closer to the field than any other [NFL] stadium.
Putting all the suites and clubs on one side allowed us to have a very narrow sideline on that side, the east side."

In addition, the south end zone seats have been moved 60 ft. closer than they were in the old Soldier Field. "That's good for soccer too," Hoffman said. "Soccer draws crowds of about 20,000 to 25,000, and that's what our lower bowl accommodates. So the soccer fans will be right up close to the action. We got our sidelines so close for football, we actually have to have removable seating on the northwest and southwest corners of the lower bowl to accommodate a 70-yd.-wide international soccer field.

"On the whole bowl, all the seats are as close as they can be by NFL guidelines without violating safety guidelines. We were definitely trying to get people as close to the action as possible, yet make sure disabled patrons have clear sightlines, even when people stand up in front of them."

Because an entire stadium has been built inside an existing stadium, being close to the action will be central to the experience, agreed Barnaby Dinges of the Dinges Gang Ltd., an Evanston, Ill.-based communications consultancy hired by the Chicago Bears and the Chicago Park District to manage communications on the Lakefront Redevelopment Project.

"There will not be a bad seat," Dinges said.

Supersized Scoreboards

Adding to the feeling of closeness will be two new video scoreboards, one beyond each end zone, north and south. They're 23 ft. high and 82 ft. wide, or about twice the size of the video board in Soldier Field for its last season in 2001. Along with the scoreboards, the highly vertical wall of suites will help retain fan noise inside the stadium and should be a "wall of sound" intimidating to opposing teams, Dinges said.

Rising above three levels of club seating on the east side, the suites will be stacked four stories high in the center and will taper down to three stories as the wall moves north and south, said Joseph Caprile, principal in Chicago-based LW+Z Joint Venture. (The project is a joint venture of two architecture firms: Chicago-based Lohan Caprile Goettsch Associates, with primary responsibility for the master plan and North Burnham Park project, and Boston-based Wood & Zapata, with primary responsibility for the architectural design of the Soldier Field stadium.)

The stacking results in "a very defined glass wall," Caprile added. "And the glass used in the suites is a special, transparent glass, to the extent that the glass in the lower half of the suite virtually disappears. Because the suites are stacked, the front glass wall is sloped facing down on the field. Right above that transparent glass, are windows that will open. That's because a lot of these suites fans love hearing the fan noise, the cheers and the occasional boos."

Fan Amenities

Concessions and bathroom facilities have also been upgraded. Fans will have far more options in concession areas, types of food and beverages, and washrooms. And unlike in the old Soldier Field, eating and drinking won't take fans out of the sightlines of the game.

"You can get a beverage and still keep in touch with the game on the field," Caprile added.

The new facility will also offer club lounges, a new amenity for Bears fans. Located on the east side behind each of the three levels of club seating, the club lounges will be places for fans to congregate, relax and order food and beverages that will be brought to them by servers. Fans will be able to use the club lounge on their own level, as well as the other two.

"Another thing that's interesting about the club lounges is that they are all tied together by a three-story atrium," Caprile said. "So you don't feel isolated from the other lounges. In the club lounges, you're primarily watching the game on TV, although on the lower club lounge, there's a bar at the 50-yard line where you can sit and have a drink and see the field."

Caprile's guess is that the intimacy designed into the new Soldier Field will help make it one of the liveliest venues in the NFL.

"I walk under that stadium and it truly reminds me of a performing arts center or an opera house, where the seating is brought very close to the event," he said.