Blue Jays feeling ‘pride’ in Rogers Centre renovation now at finish line

TORONTO – Now that the finish line is days away on a nearly $400-million stadium renovation that’s been all-encompassing for Toronto Blue Jays staff over the past few years, the overwhelming feeling for Marnie Starkman is …

“Pride,” the club’s executive vice-president, baseball operations, said Thursday after helping unveil the fully renewed Rogers Centre, even as work continued on the finishing touches ahead of Monday’s home opener against the Seattle Mariners. “The reality of the project, we keep saying 18 months in five months – it's really what it was. Overall it was probably like a 4-5 year project we did in two years.

“We were fortunate we had the roof,” she continued. “A lot of other ballparks have to do this in the middle of snow and weather and that was one thing we could control. The second we could get in here, we started. PCL (the contractor) did an incredible job. Our staff did an incredible job. And it was around the clock. … We were so involved in the design and so intentional on the design. I'm so proud of that because you're seeing it come to fruition.”

The second phase of the renovation completely redid the Rogers Centre’s lower seating bowl, which was essentially untouched since the dome’s opening in 1989, reorienting all the seats so they now face the field. The chairs were widened, with cup-holders, the slope was raised to improve sightlines, the stairways between sections now have rails and anyone five-foot-eight or taller won’t have to fret about legroom any longer.

Visually, the stadium now looks seamless after a Frankenstein season in 2023 which featured the old bowl with an entirely redesigned outfield. In terms of how it plays, we’ll see, but there’s now about 3,000-square-feet less foul territory, although it’s more concentrated around the infield now, a new version of the same turf they’ve had the past three seasons and new high, angled walls leading to the outfield which could create interesting bounces on balls driven down the lines.

There are also new food and beverage items, further adding to how the place’s entire feel is changed.

“I'm excited for people to just experience the bowl differently,” said Starkman. “We didn't make changes to the concourse, but the change of bringing the bowl in opened the concourse. The (new) drink rails. You go to different ballparks and that's the point, walk around and experience it. You don't have to sit in your seat all nine innings.

“Our old ballpark, that was all we had to offer, the seat. That's what I'm most excited about.”

The changes have shrunk the dome’s capacity down to about 38,000 seats, a figure that flexes up to about 40,000 with outfield district tickets and private suites, although accessible seating is up 18 per cent, with new lowered drink rails ringing the lower bowl.

A key revenue driver will be the new 1,600 premium seats behind home plate, 210 of which are in the TD Lounge area that will be visible on TV behind home plate and has a striking resemblance to the premium seating behind the plate at Yankee Stadium. (Work continues on three premium clubs that are expected to open mid-season, as planned).

That’s no coincidence as Starkman along with Anuk Karunaratne, her former co-VP who this off-season left to join the St. Louis Cardinals, and several other staffers toured dozens of sports venues to help inform their decisions.

The new dugouts, for instance, are a nod to Minnesota’s Target Field, Atlanta’s Truist Park and Texas’ Globe Life Field. The new seats borrowed from what the Cubs did at Wrigley Field. The premium seating and lounges were informed by what the Yankees did as the Blue Jays partnered with the same concessionaire, Legends.

At the same time, “we're still Toronto and there's still a different way of experiencing sports here,” said Starkman. “Some of the premium, we took inspiration from ballparks, but we also looked at the city. We're competing with King Street and all these other amenities that aren't the same as Texas and Atlanta and Arizona and some of those places. So there were little bits of things that we took as we went along. The brick that we put behind home plate, we wanted a bit of character, but we knew we weren't a red brick place, so it was like, OK, let's make it our version of that. So many teams were so helpful in sharing that information. We appreciated that and it was really helpful in the design process.”

Blue Jays players and visitors will both have new clubhouses, with the home side getting all the bells and whistles. Finishing work on both continued frantically on Thursday to have everything done on time for Monday.

Starkman called this a generational renovation of the dome and smaller projects still lie ahead, with president and CEO Mark Shapiro saying in the spring that key areas of opportunity include some sort of kids area and areas recognizing team history, if not a single-spot focused club Hall of Fame.

“We need to obsess every year with how do we continue to modernize this place,” said Starkman, since the club envisions the current iteration creating a 10-15 year runway during which bigger picture decisions about the dome’s future have to be made.

Before the Blue Jays embarked on this renovation, the idea of embarking on a larger-scale, sports-anchored real estate project was examined but that’s a massive undertaking that requires years of planning.

Considering what’s next isn’t imminent, but it’s on the horizon.

“I don't really have a time-frame,” Shapiro said during the spring. “I just think, OK, we got done this, we've addressed what we had to address, we modernized fan experience, we modernized player experience, we need to turn our attention to the Dominican, think about our facilities there, some of our minor-league facilities, continue to do normal capital planning and projects and maintenance. But one of the things we're going to need to think about is long-term planning. So that just involves research, that involves understanding alternatives and a plan. It's just responsible business to think about that. …

“We'll continue to continue to maintain and approach capital the way you would as if (the dome) was a new ballpark. But we also have to think about life-span and normal course of business.”

For the time being, the Blue Jays and their fans have a renewed stadium to enjoy, the most substantive change to their customer experience since the dome first opened.