The Complexities of Ballfield Design.

Planning and designing a ballfield complex for team sports activities and leagues is an art form. Whether the sole attraction or a component of a larger community park, ballfields present certain challenges, including size and neighbors' concerns about potential noise, night lighting, and traffic problems. In many cases, citizens actually oppose the construction of ballfields, making the art of negotiation a vital part of the design and planning process.

In Colorado, fourplex ballfields -- which tend toward adult sport complexes that include recreation fields and tournament facilities for baseball and softball, combined with concessions and storage space for maintenance equipment -- have been growing in popularity since the mid-1980s. Team sports leagues are popular here, and towns often compete for tournaments, which draw visitors to local motels and restaurants, pumping up local economies.

Design Concepts, a landscape architecture and planning firm based in Lafayette, Colo., specializes in planning and designing multiplex team sports facilities. Its recent projects include:

* An award-winning baseball/softball fourplex in Westminster, which was inspired by Coors Field, home of Major League Baseball's Colorado Rockies.

* The Challenger Regional Park ballfields in Douglas County, with three ballfields, four soccer fields, canopied picnic areas, and a plaza and concession building.

* A major ballfield complex, including a concession building, for booming Brighton, north of Denver.

* Redstone Park, a community park in Highlands Ranch, 12 miles south of downtown Denver, which includes a three-field lighted softball complex, a practice field, soccer fields, and eight lighted tennis courts.

Multiplex ballfields differ dramatically in both cost and amenities. For example, the fourplex in Westminster City Park, designed in collaboration with Denver-based DHM Design Corp., cost $3.5 million. Part of a 200-acre park, the 45-acre facility features lighted, tournament-quality ballfields with concessions, offices, press boxes, overlooks, and shade structures designed by OZ Architecture. The exquisite architecture and materials, including red brick pavers and a green, seamed metal roof, suggest the elegance of Coors Field.

Brighton, on the other hand, built four ballfields and parking for $1.1 million. Though executed on a fighter budget -- one that required close teamwork with park staff, the board, and the city -- it's also a world-class complex, integrating beautiful playing fields with areas for warm-ups and practice. The central lawn area and canopied playground are perfect for family picnics and fun.

Planning the Ballfield Complex

It can take several years to plan a team sports facility. The staff at Design Concepts has found, however, that because many communities in Colorado want their own facility, local park and recreation agencies must often plan ballfield complexes quickly, sometimes within months, to respond to public demand.

Selecting an appropriate site is one of the key considerations. A multiplex generally requires a large parcel of land -- at least 30 acres -- so siting them is often the first big challenge. The land shouldn't be too steep or too flat -- both of which cost more to grade. The ideal site for multiplex ballfields contains a central high point that sheds water in all directions and good soil that encourages proper drainage. Sites, however, come with all kinds of conditions.

The Westminster site was sloped and contained bedrock material, which had to be over-excavated and replaced with good soil. The two-level design accommodated the site and allowed for an underground maintenance garage. A sloping site also permitted built-in grandstands.

Solid research on traffic patterns and access solutions for recreation facilities is sparse, and highway-engineering standards don't really apply to this special use. Parking needs must be calculated on a case-by-case basis, since no standards exist. Parking headaches have often been mitigated by collaborating with another facility, such as a recreation center whose peak loads are opposite baseball, soccer, or softball season.

Working with the Community

Extensive community participation should be anticipated when planning and designing a team sports facility. Coloradans place a heavy emphasis on recreational activities, and citizens expect to be involved in the planning and design of public facilities. Some residents may object to the noise, traffic, and stadium-style lighting they associate with sports complexes. They may believe the park doesn't meet their needs, or compromises the quality or "feel" of their neighborhood.

For example, neighbors in an area with dozens of toddlers may welcome a playground but oppose ballfields because they generate traffic without providing a service -- although they may use the ballfields in a few years. One of the best ways to work with ballfield-complex opponents is to listen carefully to their concerns and involve them in a consensus-building design process.

Redstone Park, a new 53-acre community park, is a good example. Before even attempting to produce a final design, the Design Concepts team spent an entire year master-planning the park. The process included many meetings with stakeholders -- the client, Highlands Ranch Metropolitan Districts, which manages the community's water, roads, parks, and open space; the local school district; Shea Homes, the local home developer; the Division of Wildlife; and the Army Corps of Engineers. In addition, aided by Kezziah-Watkins, a Colorado Springs firm that conducts public design processes, Design Concepts talked with neighbors and other citizens, beginning with an informational meeting.

Nearly 100 people showed up at this first meeting to express their concerns (the biggest, the impact of noise and light pollution from night ballgames). About 75 people came to a second meeting and broke into small groups for a work session. They took paper cutouts of lakes and ballfields and moved them around to design their own park. Each individual group then presented its scheme. The session was photographed and videotaped, and a list of park elements was developed.

This hands-on approach is the key to building consensus. When people see their desires conflicting with a neighbor's, they seek compromise. They may jump at the chance to attack an idea proposed by public officials, but they're loath to attack one another. The consensus-building approach used to plan Redstone helped direct the design of the ballfields and the placement of light and speaker fixtures to least affect neighboring homeowners. The Metro Districts wanted four lighted ballfields, but settled for three lighted fields and a fourth unlighted one (which, incidentally, worked at Wrigley Field for decades).

Design of Ballfields

The placement of fields is key to a facility's success. First, fields require good orientation so players don't face late-afternoon glare. Unfortunately, providing perfect sun angles on every field in a multiplex is impossible. But by gleaning four standard configurations from a sun-angle chart and combining them into one, the Brighton fourplex contains one field with perfect sun angles, one almost perfect, and two that are optimal for the site.

Staggering the orientation -- pulling fields apart and opening up the middle rather than placing them flush against one another, like a pie cut into quarters -- can also provide positive results. Moreover, when all the fields are pushed together, players don't have adequate warm-up space. Pulling the fields apart creates warm-up space (or other public spaces) in the center and more flexibility in the orientation of fields.

At Redstone Park, the four fields were skewed as they were pulled from the center. In the middle, and between fields, a paved plaza with a concession stand, restrooms, a playground, a picnic shelter, and basketball courts was placed. In Brighton, as well as at Challenger Park, the parking was brought into the core, making it central and more convenient.

Locating parking toward the middle also helps with drainage, as all four fields drain away from the high point. This is an important consideration in combating Colorado's summer-afternoon thunderstorms. On some fields, the center fielder may be standing six feet below the batter. But because the entire plane of the field (and not just the outfield) is tilted equally away from home plate, players cannot detect the flit. It isn't apparent to spectators either. Most fields, in fact, are tilted at approximately 2 percent for drainage. The more expensive alternative, if you have a flat field, is to build on sand with mechanical pumps installed below.

In addition to providing convenient warm-up space, preferably fenced off from spectators, design considerations for players include eliminating glare (using neutral colors for risers or grandstands helps), placing a roof over a dugout to protect against sun and weather, locating the openings for dugouts facing away from first and third base (to avoid stray foul balls), and placing dugouts so they don't block fans' view of the game.

It is Design Concepts' philosophy that ballfields should provide a number of different ways for people to enjoy the game. During tournaments, family and friends often spend an entire day cheering on their team, so they should be comfortable and have clear views of the game. Seating can range from small, portable bleachers to built-in concrete grandstands. Tournament-size facilities require seating for between 500 and 600 spectators and offer a choice of sunny or shady spots.

Westminster's stadium provides a variety of spectator seating including built-in, covered grandstands, uncovered concrete steps, box seats, and picnic shelters over dugouts. Some of the viewing space is formal, some more informal. Included is extra space with good views of the fields for family and friends who wish to stand, sit in lawn chairs, or need unobstructed views from a wheelchair.

Lights, Noise, Parking ... Action

Sports lighting has become quite specialized, so it's wise to work with an experienced supplier and a good electrical engineer. The trick to finding the right lighting is in trying to achieve balance. Neighbors may object to taller lightposts as visual intrusions. However, the taller posts generally provide more light over a smaller area, with less spillover, because the light is focused vertically rather than horizontally. With good lighting, only 5 percent of ambient light extends beyond the field; if you're standing 15 feet past the fence, you're in the dark. Redstone used 70- to 80-foot lightposts with high-intensity, metal halide lights and cone shields.

In addition to field lighting, security lighting is important. It's a good idea to provide ambient lighting to allow staff to leave safely once the field lights are off. The ambient lights can even be set up for remote access and activated either by telephone or remote-control device.

Similarly, the design of the ballfields can mitigate noise problems. Sound (particularly from public-address systems) should be "aimed" toward the spectators and away from neighbors. It's tempting to locate a press box and loudspeakers in one central location, but these actually work better and produce less sound when they are aimed at each field. Solid buffers also help reduce noise.

Providing adequate parking will also help pacify neighbors. The number of parking spaces a team sports complex requires varies depending on whether it provides only ballfields or includes other facilities such as tennis courts and soccer fields. The proximity of nearby public transportation must also be taken into consideration.

Turf, Irrigation and Maintenance

The Westminster fourplex features an underground storage and maintenance facility. This is convenient for maintenance staff, as ballfields require a fair amount of regular work. It's preferable to keep maintenance to a minimum when planning team sports complexes. For example, long, continuous strips of lawn will eliminate the need for push mowing.

The type of turf used for the playing surface is important to players. The most resilient and fastest-growing turf is a sports-type blend, 80 percent of which is composed of four varieties of bluegrass, and the rest perennial rye grass.

A central, computer-controlled satellite system for irrigating fields is an effective albeit expensive option, unless it is part of a districtwide system. Small sprinkler heads with rubber covers will discourage the ball from bouncing at strange angles if it hits them. The sprinkler heads should have good control and tight coverage so they don't overspray onto the fields or warning tracks. A convenient, quick coupler for wetting down infields is a necessity.

As amateur ballparks continue to take design cues from their major-league counterparts, aesthetics has become of paramount importance. Facility planners and designers attempt to evoke baseball and softball's special culture and sense of history through design features. This doesn't mean that a neighborhood facility must be as luxurious as its big-league brethren -- although Denver's professional baseball stadium sets a great example by creating an attractive environment that makes baseball an event the whole family can enjoy.

Making a facility more attractive needn't bust the project budget; often it can be accomplished through simple design details. At Challenger, seating walls on the edges of ballfields and dugouts were constructed of rhyolite, a local volcanic stone, in shades of gray, pink, and buff. The Brighton ballfields have bowstring caps on the backstops, which reflect local architecture.

At Redstone Park the backstops are peaked like the Rocky Mountains, and curvilinear paving, which connects the ballfields, is scored and stained to mimic water flowing through a canyon. A "backstop plaza" features special paving and boulders placed within planting beds. The park takes its name from the red sandstone that litters the nearby foothills, which is used for paving, planters, and benches in the ballfield area. In place of galvanized fencing, black vinyl-clad fences with stone columns are used.

One of the aims, said Tom Hoby, director of parks and open space for the Metro Districts, "was to have a creative design and to make Redstone Park more than just functional." Douglas County Parks' Ron Benson believes that construction money spent to reduce maintenance pays off in player satisfaction and long-term savings.

Benson says that combining that approach with the creation of a place attractive to players will practically guarantee consistent satisfaction. When properly designed, ballfield complexes can become not just a place for recreation, but a special place for families and friends to enjoy outdoor activities and celebrate the relationship between player and fan.

These are points that Axel Bishop, Carol Henry, and Rob Layton, principals with the Lafayette, Colo.-based landscape architecture and planning firm Design Concepts, know well. Of course, there are the other major design albatrosses -- size, potential for noise, and lighting and traffic hassles -- that the trio must battle daily when proposing and constructing a new facility.

You think the altitude is tough on pitchers at Denver's mile-high Coors Field? Try convincing a kvetching resident that a proposed four-field complex will be a boon to his quiet suburban neighborhood.