Tacoma Rainiers President Aaron Artman took issue this week with statements from members of one of the losing bidders for renovating Cheney Stadium that their team’s design included a public concourse.
“The important thing to know with regard to the concourse is how we’re defining concourse,” Artman said Tuesday. “We’re talking about a concourse where fans have a view down to the field regardless of any price level.”
“In the case of the Turner design, there’s no more of a concourse under that definition then there is in the (winning) Mortenson design,” added Artman, who was among seven members on a selection committee that chose Mortenson for the project.
But members of the Turner Construction design-build team said this week that a public concourse does exist in their design. Renderings and other documents indicate the Turner design provides a “view corridor from the concourse to the field.”
“I would say it’s a public concourse, yes,” Brian Phair said Monday of what he described as a publicly accessible area through the grandstand in the Turner design. Phair, chief executive officer of PCS Structural Solutions, part of the Turner team, added that others might describe this feature differently. But essentially, he said, the design provided a publicly accessible corridor with views on the grandstand’s main level, just above the seating bowl.
Artman disputed the PCS interpretation, saying that not all of that segment of the Turner design is open to everyone, nor is it accessible to the seating bowl.
The issue arose after a News Tribune story Monday stated that the two losing bids for the $30 million ballpark renovation project had included “a public concourse with field views,” in contrast to the selected design submitted by the Mortenson-led team.
No one disputes that the Wade Perrow design, which came in third place, has a public concourse with field views.
City Public Assembly Facilities Director Mike Combs, who also was on the selection panel, said Tuesday that a traditional concourse would be accessible to seating bowl areas – as at Seattle’s Safeco Field.
Combs added that he couldn’t tell by Turner’s final renderings whether a public gathering area on the third base side is accessible from the seats below and open to everyone. As for the fuller concourse area described by PCS, he added: “I think it’s more of an aisle-way than a concourse.”
For an extended version of this story, see the Political Buzz blog at blog.thenewstribune.com/politics.
Lewis Kamb: 253-597-8542
lewis.kamb@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
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