VernBlog - First Entry - Stadium Renovation Update!

So Election Day 2008 I get the honor of writing my first blog entry! Election Day is always an exciting day & I was the 530th person to vote this morning in my district along with my 13 month old daughter Chloe (much to my dismay, they wouldn’t let her vote!) I’m proud to report that all Mallards full-time staff have already voted, or have plans to do so later in the day. Anyway, I suppose a day dominated by politics is a good day to discuss how things have been going on our stadium renovation plans.

We’ve been working closely with the city of Madison for a while now & last week a new lease & construction agreement were introduced to the Madison Common Council, which referred it to the Parks Commission & the Board of Estimates (BOE). It has been fascinating working with the city on this project & I’m happy to report that the Mayor’s Office, Alders Schumacher & Rhodes-Conway, & new Parks Superintendent Kevin Briski & everyone else that has worked with us on this project have been great to work with &, more importantly, we’re all on the same page about how this project will move forward! Hopefully we’ll get approval from Parks Commission & BOE in the coming weeks & go before the Common Council on December 2nd for final approval. Check out cityofmadison.com for a schedule of meetings where this will be discussed & we’d love to have you stop by & share your feelings about the project. Basically what all this means is that the major renovation we have been talking about happening at the “Duck Pond” is reaching the final stages of approval & that representatives from both the city of Madison & the Mallards have reached agreement in principal on the ballpark improvements!

As the plan stands right now we would replace all the steel/wood/aluminum bleachers that make up the vast majority of our seating & replace them with new seating structures & seats (we would re-use at least 1,000 of the existing seats, you know…saving the world one seat at a time!) The entire perimeter of the field from the edge of the Great Dane Duck Blind to the LF corner would be re-defined as well. This would provide better viewing angles of the game & actually put the first row of seats right up against the field providing an unprecedented view of the game (sorry, First Base Super Fans!) However, if you do enjoy the standing room only experience at the “Duck Pond” don’t fret…we haven’t forgotten about you & I can assure you that the final plans will have some enticing options for your consideration.

The next thing we are working on is an attempt to minimize the number of seats that are right in the line of the setting sun at the park. The hope right now is to have a few less rows in the area of the stadium on the 3rd base side & build a large deck directly behind those seats that would potentially connect to & go over the top of the existing clubhouse building. This area would become a second “Courtyard” type space featuring all kinds of food, beverages, merchandise, kids games, & more all with the added bonus of actually being able to see the action on the field while you are waiting in line or talking to friends!

Well, seeing that I’ve already written about 500 words on the new park, I think I’m going to talk about the rest of the concepts & hopes for the stadium project in future posts…STAY TUNED! The other important thing to note here is that, at this point, I feel we have about a 50-50 chance of starting & completing these improvements prior to the start of the 2009 season. There will be some important benchmarks in the coming months & by early January at the latest the city & the Mallards will make a decision about whether or not we think we can get this done for the start of the 2009 season. Hopefully we can make it happen, but if we don’t we would start construction immediately after the season is over & have everything ready for the start of the 2010 season. All in all I think this is exciting news for Mallards fans & be sure to keep checking in here for more details on the plans for the stadium renovation. We’ve got a lot more fun things in mind for the project that I look forward to sharing with you all in the near future.

Also, I can’t wait to start filling you in on the Mallards MSCR Basketball team. We start playing after New Years, but we’ve been fine-tuning our skills all Fall on Tuesday nights over at Sherman Middle School. All I’m saying is you can’t let Nick Staehler get free after a pick…the kid never misses & that I’ve only seen Kevin Caloia jump once in well over a month of playing with him. BEWARE!