DODGERS NOTEBOOK: DODGER STADIUM TO GET A FACE LIFT.

Byline: Tony Jackson Staff Writer

After hearing countless complaints about bad sightlines in the new premium field-level seats he had installed down each outfield line last winter, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt vowed to address the problem after the season. That is one promise McCourt is keeping, overhauling those sections as part of a $15-$20 million ballpark renovation that already is under way and is expected to be completed in time for next spring's Freeway Series with the Angels.

With the exception of those on the suite level, all of the stadium's 56,000 seats will be replaced this offseason. The new seats will be of the same plastic as the old ones, but the ballpark's color scheme will be dramatically different.

Those premium seats beyond each dugout, meanwhile, will be replaced with fewer rows of box seats that will include a tabletop counter in front of, and running the length of, each row.

``It is (being done) to eliminate the sightline problems and really create a new level of seating down there,'' said Dodgers chief operating officer Marty Greenspun, who added that the boxes will have extra leg room.

The change will result in 500 fewer seats in those sections, but those will be offset by reopening 500 of the seats - either on the reserved (fourth) level or in the outfield pavilions - that were decommissioned last winter.

The seating configuration in the rest of the stadium will be unchanged.

As for the color scheme, the entire field-level bowl, including the premium seats behind home plate and down the lines (which currently are blue), will be yellow. But it will be a lighter yellow, in more of a pastel shade, than the current field-level seats. Ditto the loge level, which will go from bright orange to pastel orange.

The reserved level will go from bright blue to turquoise, with the top deck going from bright red to sky blue. The pavilions also will go to the orange pastel. The wooden seats on the suite level will be unchanged, but they will be removed and refurbished before they are reattached.

The new color scheme will be practically identical to the one the stadium had when it opened in 1962. But Greenspun cautioned against using the term ``retro.''

``I think it's a restoration feeling,'' he said. ``It's really going back to the time when the stadium was built, which is mid-century modern architecture. It was territorial in nature. There was definitely a Southern California or West Coast mid-century (architecture) and an East Coast mid-century, which was a different color palette than the West Coast palette.''

In other words, the idea is that Dodger Stadium, with its new pastel-based scheme, will re-create the feeling of Los Angeles in the early 1960s.

Tony Jackson,[phone]

tony.jackson(at)dailynews.com