Salt of the spring:
BALLPARK WATCH Salt River Fields stands out as spring site model
The part-time home of the Rockies and Diamondbacks shakes up the look, feel of spring training.
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. Baseball fans might look at the Phoenix area’s 10 spring training complexes as the sport’s Walt Disney World.
“We know fans come here because it’s one big baseball theme park in Arizona every March,” says Michelle Streeter, vice president of communications for Visit Mesa, which promotes tourism to the city.
If that is the case, then its Magic Kingdom has to be Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, the springtime home of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies since 2011.
When Disney World opened in 1971, it revolutionized theme parks. Did Salt River Fields have the same impact on spring training?
“I think it did,” says Dave Dunne, general manager of operations at Salt River. “It brought spring training to another level, a revolutionary level.”
Diamondbacks president and CEO Derrick Hall says the complex has been revolutionary in design, architecture, shade, landscaping, parking, multiuse capabilities and player preparation.
But first, one must consider the scale, unlike any spring training complex previously built.
TIPPING THE SCALES
The 140-acre site, which is in a Scottsdale ZIP code but not within its city limits, is on land controlled by the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, which funded the construction of the facility.
“Spring training clubhouses used to be in the 30,000- to 40,000square-foot range,” Dunne says. “Each team’s building here is 85,000.”
Rockies vice president of ballpark operations Kevin Kahn says, “From a (player) development standpoint, Salt River allowed us to implement all of the things we’d talked about but couldn’t do in Tucson (their previous home). For example, our weight room now is two stories high with a cardio mezzanine on the upper level. Every spring, we had to rent a truck to take our weights from Denver to a tent in Tucson. Now our players can use the facilities at Salt River even in the offseason.”
POSITIVE INFLUENCE
Hall says other teams contemplating new complexes or renovations to their facilities invariably come to Salt River for a tour. This has included representatives from several cities in Mexico. “It’s a big compliment that this has become the prototype, not only in spring training but also globally,” Hall says.
Since Salt River opened, munici- palities in Arizona such as Surprise, Peoria and Mesa have spent millions of dollars in renovations and enlargements of spring training facilities. Complexes in Florida also have received huge upgrades, benefiting the New York Yankees, Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers. Nick Gandy, the Florida Sports Foundation’s liaison for the Grapefruit League, recently toured the signifi- cant improvements in the Tigers facilities in Lakeland, including a new 85,000-square-foot clubhouse. “I knew that they’d toured all the parks in Florida and had also visited Arizona. I took one look at the clubhouse and said, ‘Are these ideas you got at Salt River?’ ”
Perhaps Salt River’s biggest impact can be seen in the Chicago Cubs complex in Mesa, which opened in 2014. Not only was it built on the site of an old golf course, like Salt River, the immense size of the clubhouse, two-story weight room, training rooms and even a theater is quite similar to those of the Diamondbacks and Rockies. After seeing the crowds Salt River could attract, Cubs Park (now dubbed Sloan Park) was built to be even bigger.
“Imitation is the best form of flattery,” Streeter says. “Having visited Salt River Fields, there’s no question that it was taken into account when designing Sloan Park.”
For the most part, public funds have constructed and renovated the complexes in Arizona. Not so with Salt River, which was built by the Indian Community.
Mark Coronado, community and recreation services director for Surprise, was responsible for overseeing $32 million in renovations to the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals clubhouses at Surprise Stadium. “You’re going to see more of the Salt River model, because that was private funding,” Coronado says. “Public funding is drying up.”
Several spring training complexes have been designed with land set aside for commercial development. The land is still empty.
Not so near Salt River Fields. Bryan Meyers, for the last 17 years the community manager of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, said The Pavilions, a shopping center adjacent to the site, was languishing before the complex was built. “The occupancy was less than 60%, but today it’s over 90% with new pads for stores being added all the time. Salt River acted as a catalyst to jump-start our economy.”
THREE KEY INGREDIENTS
Salt River Fields wouldn’t have become a reality without three key components.
First, the Diamondbacks and Rockies were permitted to escape their leases in Tucson because there were no other teams for them to play nearby.
Second, the Rockies’ former president, Keli McGregor, had a profound role in the creation of Salt River Fields. He died in 2010 at 48 of a rare virus that infected his heart before construction was completed.
“I’ll never forget Keli and I pulled up to this old golf course and looked out and both of us felt chills,” Hall says. “We knew this was it. We could envision it all. It breaks my heart that he never got to see it finished.”
Kahn says that while McGregor “saw this project as the opportunity to take our organization to the next level, equally important to him was the partnership aspect. He wanted this to be a success for the Indian Community as much as for the Rockies.”
In turn, the Indian Community created the Keli McGregor Reflection Trail just outside the main gate of the ballpark.
The community’s native culture also contributed to the design. Every year, Kahn says, representatives from the Indian Community meet with the Rockies players and staff to describe their history and values. In turn, the team sends players to their schools and senior centers.
“This wasn’t a land deal. This was a culture deal,” says Mo Stein, principal at HKS, the architects of the complex. “There is a big difference. We wouldn’t have been able to complete this if we hadn’t understood that.”
Now as fans arrive for exhibition games, they can see signage along the pathways that describes the Indian Community’s history. They can see plants that are native to the area and colors and architectural styles used by the community for generations. They can taste native foods at the concessions stands and hear young people from the community singing the national anthem in native languages.
Members of the Indian Community think the teams and designers were successful in “tastefully integrating our culture into Salt River Fields,” according to Meyers. Mock operates BaseballParks.com, an affiliate of USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties. He has visited all 203 parks currently used for major league, spring training and the affiliated minors.