Shea At 35 Faces Uncertain Future

Shea Stadium rarely looked as glorious as it did on Monday as 55,000 cheering, chanting fans jammed the Flushing Meadows arena to celebrate Opening Day and a team whose prospects for victory seemed better this year than anytime in a decade. After a morning that began with gray skies and stormy weather, by noon the sky was solid blue and the wind brisk and Tom Seaver was there to throw out the first ball — a nice reminder that 1999 marks the 30th anniversary of the "Miracle Mets" 1969 World Series. But there is another significant milestone at Shea this week that went barely noticed on Opening Day.
This Saturday, April 17, will be the stadium’s 35th birthday. Although not as old as Yankee Stadium and rarely considered a "cathedral of baseball" like its Bronx counterpart, Shea has offered in those 35 years a wealth of history, greatness and fond memories. So it is ironic that this past week’s opening day may also be marking the stadium’s swan song. The owners of the Mets, during a pre-game reception, confirmed to The Queens Courier that the plans are "in the works" for a new home for the team to be erected in the Shea Stadium parking lot adjacent to the existing stadium. After the new stadium is built, Shea would most likely be demolished. Co-owners Nelson Doubleday and Fred Wilpon said that negotiations with the city are on track. And stadium manager Kevin McCarthy said the Ebbets Field-style new arena with a retractable dome is "on order" and slated to be ready for the 2003 baseball season. The new stadium would seat 40,000 people and would be designed not only for baseball but for concerts and the NCAA Final Four. While the new facility will have luxury boxes, high tech video and audio systems and state-of-the-art facilities, it will also evoke the past. Mets president Fred Wilpon, who is currently putting the finishing touches on this plan, wants the new stadium to have the quaint red brick ballpark feel like the legendary home of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ebbets Field.
To accomplish this, there will be a lowered right field wall and a pedestrian concourse to bring in the community as well as being intimatly close to the action seating. It will contain three tiers of seats encircling the first and third base lines. It will have the right field open to view from the pedestrian concourse on 126 St. The roof will be in three sections that will rollback onto a structure to be built on the south side of the ballpark. The pedestrian mall will begin at what is now home plate at Shea and extend directly into the new stadium. There will be two large garages across the street from the new stadium along Roosevelt Ave., providing considerably more parking than exists today. The additional parking will also alleviate a good portion of the parking problem that exists when both the Mets and the U.S. Open are in session. The new Arthur Ashe Stadium in adjacent Flushing Meadows-Corona Park has expanded the capacity for the annual tennis championships and makeshift parking lots have been put up on parkland far from the stadium. The new expanded Shea parking will triple the current amount of parking spaces. The plan will also call for two large retail areas and a Championship Plaza outside the main entrance which will be the Mets version of the Yankee Monument Park, saluting Met greats like Casey Stengel, Gil Hodges, Tom Seaver, Tommy Agee, Ron Swoboda, Keith Hernandez, Mookie Wilson, Willie Mays, Ed Kranepool, etc.
The Willets Point subway station will be renovated and connect directly to the new stadium. The cost for all of this is being estimated at over $450 million. Although the Mets are going to foot the bill for a good portion of this, there will be a significant part to be picked up by the City. Wilpon is quietly negotiating with the city, and it is not yet certain how much of the bill will be picked up by the taxpayers. Unlike the sometimes fractious relations between the City and Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, the negotiations between the Mets and the City have been downright cordial. Officials at Queens Borough Hall have praised Wilpon’s style, saying he has "acted like a gentleman." However, for some of the fans there seemed to be a nostalgia for Shea. "This place has a flood of good memories for me," said Todd McKeney of Flushing who brought his son to opening day. "I remember my father bringing me here in the late ’60s and I got to see Tom Seaver in his prime. A new ballpark might be great but frankly I’ll miss this place a lot." Shea Stadium opened on April 17, 1964 and it was constructed by the City in conjunction with the World’s Fair which took place in the adjacent park. First it was to be called Flushing Meadows Park Municipal Stadium but it was later named for attorney William A. Shea, the man responsible for bringing a National League team back to New York after the loss of the Dodgers to California.
Shea Stadium’s rich history will likely stir a great deal of nostalgia when it is demolished. In its first years it was host to the football Jets and the Mets, then a hopeless but lovable team under the direction of legendary manager Casey Stengel. It was the scene of a huge fan free-for-all on the field when the 1969 "Miracle Mets" came from the bottom to win the World Series. 1972 saw a second Series and 1986 came a second Met World Series victory. 1969 also saw the Jets and their powerful quarterback Joe Namath in the Super Bowl. For three seasons in the early 1970s, during the reconstruction of Yankee Stadium, Shea played host to both the Yankees and the football Giants. In the early 1990s, a major overhaul of the stadium was undertaken, including a new blue facade with neon sculptures replacing the old orange and blue grillwork. Some of the history of Shea has nothing to do with baseball. The Beatles performed a concert there in 1965 one of the most memorable moments in rock ‘n roll history. They performed a second time in 1966. The Who, Simon and Garfunkel, Elton John, Billy Joel, The Rolling Stones and others have staged concerts there. Billy Graham took his crusade to Shea in the 1970s and Pope John Paul II came to the stadium in 1979. In 1997, President Bill Clinton spoke at Shea to honor Jackie Robinson on the 50th anniversary of the ballplayer’s breaking of the color barrier. Robinson’s name is one being considered for the new stadium.
To those who will miss Shea there might be some hope for its survival. One source close to City negotiations with the Mets management say there is some talk about keeping Shea up adjacent to the new facility in the hope of bringing a professional football team to the City, possibly the Jets who originally played at Shea until the team’s owner, Leon Hess, unhappy with the conditions at Shea, moved the team to Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands. But since his leave, Shea has undergone a series of expensive renovations. In a move that could signal a possibility that Shea will be kept, some major new improvements unveiled at Monday’s opener include a new clubhouse, five new rows of seats behind home plate and a pair of luxury boxes next to each dugout. Mayor Rudy Giuliani was on hand for the opener, wearing the Mets colors and hat, but the perennial Yankee fan looked "like he was in pain," according to Mets general manager Steve Phillips. Giuliani would not comment on whether plans were in the works to retain Shea next to the new stadium. As the victorious Mets returned to their spanking new clubhouse after Monday’s game they discovered a flooded room with soaked wall-to-wall carpeting due to a main break. But it didn’t dampen the spirits of the players or fans. The Mets had won their first home game of their last season of the century, one that shows real hope for the team. The same could not be said for the future of Shea. But happy 35th birthday anyway, and thanks for the memories.