NFPA Journal - July/August 2012 - (Page 54)

100 YEARS OF FENWAY and a larger message board over the center field bleachers was added in 1976. The first elevator was installed in 1983—albeit a full century after Elisha Otis invented the passenger elevator— which represented a small step towards becoming an accessible building in the era before the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, to which NFPA 101 substantially conformed in 1994. It also allowed ballpark management to consider the appropriate use of elevators in Fenway Park’s emergency plans, as required by the Life Safety Code. A new emphasis on life safety expensive seating areas seemed out of the question. Far better, the thinking went, to simply bulldoze it and start from scratch. The pressure to modernize intensified in the early 1990s with the opening of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, which represented the leading edge of a wave of new retro-style urban ballparks that featured modern comforts and conveniences within the compact footprint of old-school, TEN YEARS OF FENWAY TLC 2007 + The Third Base Deck is constructed behind the grandstand seats, adding space, restrooms, and concessions. 2008 + 800 new State Street Pavilion seats plus standing room space are added down the first and third base lines. + 412 new “family-friendly” seats are added in left field. 2009 + An emergency voice/alarm communications (EVAC) network servicing Fenway and surrounding buildings is installed. In anticipation of the updated 2010 requirements regarding zoned audio for selective paging in NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code, the network includes integrated voice messaging and selective paging throughout the ballpark complex. + The original 1912 lower seating bowl is upgraded: dugout, field box, and loge seats are replaced, and the original wooden grandstand seats are refurbished and reinstalled. + About 560 new seats are added along the right field roof, along with new restrooms, concessions, and additional dedicated standing room space with drink rails. All of those changes pale in comparison to what has occurred at Fenway since 2002, however, when new ownership brought its own vision of a modern ballpark. If the occasional upgrade during most of Fenway’s first 90 years was like a Tim Wakefield knuckleball meandering towards the plate, then the speed and scope of renovations over the last 10 years more closely resembled a Pedro Martinez fastball exploding through the strike zone. Before those improvements could begin, however, a larger matter had to be settled: whether Fenway Park should be preserved, or whether it should be torn down and replaced. The “beautiful dump” I encountered in my youth had already prompted numerous calls for its destruction. As far back as 1967—the “Impossible Dream” year when the Red Sox rose from mediocrity only to lose to the St. Louis Cardinals in a dramatic sevengame World Series—then-owner Tom Yawkey complained to The Sporting News, “I feel [a new] stadium is necessary for Boston, this state, and all of New England.” The problems were obvious: aside from its age and overall dinginess, Major League Baseball’s smallest ballpark sat on the smallest parcel of land and was choked on all sides by a city neighborhood that offered the stadium no apparent room to grow. New revenue sources such as luxury boxes seemed impossible; without them, modernizing the less From a liFe saFety perspective, the Yawkey Way Concourse was the first major step towards compliance with the Life Safety Code’s means of egress requirements. baseball-only stadiums. Conditioned to the discomfort and inconvenience of Fenway, I was not prepared for the pleasure of baseball in these new-generation stadiums. When my wife, a Baltimore native, first took me to Camden Yards, I marveled at its wide concourses, grown-up-sized seats—which, unlike Fenway’s, all faced towards home plate—and the bright orderliness of Eutaw Street, which had been converted to a vibrant pedestrian walkway between the outfield fence and a beautifully restored old warehouse building behind it. Compared to Camden Yards and the retro ballparks that opened over the next several years, Fenway felt outdated to me, and much of the Red Sox organization apparently felt the same. As John Harrington, the team’s CEO, told The Boston Globe in 1996, “We don’t really want to leave Fenway Park. The spirits that are there are great. The problem is this 83-yearold stadium has become obsolete.” A “Save Fenway” movement became more vocal, intensifying the bickering and indecision. The organization was in a state of turmoil when the Red Sox were put up for sale in 2001, and one of the overriding questions concerned the new owners’ plan for Fenway Park. It didn’t take long to find out. The sale of the club, for nearly $700 million, was approved and finalized by MLB in early 2002, and the new owners were adamant that their desire was to save Fenway. One of the members of the new ownership group was Larry Lucchino, the Sox’ new president and CEO, who had orchestrated the creation of Camden Yards in a similar role with the Baltimore Orioles a decade earlier. One of Lucchino’s first moves with the Red Sox was to hire Janet Marie Smith, the architect with whom he’d worked on Camden Yards, to devise an overall plan to upgrade 54 NFPA JOURNAL JULY/AUGUST 2012 Photograph: Button courtesy of Save Fenway Park!/Christine Fry

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - July/August 2012

NFPA Journal - July/august 2012
Contents
First Word
Mail Call
In a Flash
Perspectives
Firewatch
Research
Heads Up
Structural Ops
In Compliance
Buzzwords
Outreach
Electrical Safety
Wildfire Watch
Fenway at 100
Crowning Achievement
Safety at Center Stage
Firefighter Fatalities in the United States, 2011
What’s Hot
Looking Back

NFPA Journal - July/August 2012