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New York Mets/2016 Olympic Stadium


schulzte

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No use in putting it off until April 1, this is my comprehensive New York Mets/Olympic Stadium Plan for Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. It is located at 111th St. and Corona Ave., near the Grand Central Parkway and Long Island Expressway Interchange.

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The goal of this project is to create a stadium that is less complicated to convert from baseball to track and field and back again, as Montreal and Atlanta were. I also wanted to preserve sightlines for baseball and track and field. Montreal failed with baseball, and Atlanta failed with the bent elbow for track and field (there were strange sightlines for the Olympics as a result). I think this stadium is a good solution. For the Mets, the stadium would seat 55,000 spectators, including 12,000 in the upper grandstand, 5,000 on a club/suite level (66 suites) 27,000 on the infield grandstand, and 11,000 in the outfield, mostly bleachers. This is a large ballpark, but New York is a large city, and can fill Shea Stadium regularly when the team is in contention, so there is no use building a 40,000 seat park. Fences are 12 feet tall and are 320-388-412-388-320. The fence gets somewhat taller in center field due to the design, the picture below illustrates this.

As an Olympic Stadium, capacity would be raised to 79,000. The outfield seating portion of the baseball stadium would be moved 220 feet toward the Northeast (a la Mile High Stadium), and 24,000 temporary seats would be constructed between the outfield portion and the main grandstand to complete the bowl. Temporary seating in shown in light colors, while permanent seating is shown in dark colors.

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Here is a drawing of the outfield interior of the stadium as a ballpark. I did not try to turn an Olympic Stadium into a cozy little quirky ballpark, the torch is kept, the bleachers are kept, and decorative arches as well. I wanted the park to look classy and monumental, kind of like the LA Coliseum, which was such a fitting venue for the Olympics. One of the big issues in this contest is the view. I can't really draw you a view with the park, but if you look down to the overhead shot of the park grounds, you will see that I have proposed making Flushing Meadows Corona Park the main Olympic park, which is very fitting considering the history of the park as a two time World's Fair site. I can't give the fans a view of Manhattan from Queens, or else batters would be looking at the sun at twilight. I do feel the Olympic Park would provide a nice view though, at least for upper deck patrons. They would be able to see the tremendous Unisphere monument and the Medals Plaza, the USTA National Tennis Center, as well as a completely refurbished and reconfigured New York State Pavilion. This Pavilion has three 150-200 foot observation towers (as seen in the movie "Men in Black") and an a large old exhibition area. These relics of the World's Fair need a ton of work, but could be renovated and converted into the main aquatic center for the Olympics, it looks like it might hold about 6,000 if the scale is correct. So no skyscrapers in view, but landmarks and trees are good too.

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Here is a cutaway of the main grandstand for the Olympic Stadium. There are about 22 rows in the upper deck, 5 on the club level, and 58 in the lower level, 24 above the entryway and 34 below. You will notice that there are posts in this grandstand. This is a large stadium, and I thought is was necessary to bring some level of intimacy for baseball. That and I don't have enough engineering knowhow to canteliver. So I have support posts 9 rows from the back of the lower deck. Only about 5,000 seats will be in these 9 rows, and only a fraction of these seats will have obstructed views. This allowed me to bring the upper deck 35 feet closer to the field, both lower and toward the field. The front row of the upper deck is 160 feet from the field. This is comparable to many stadiums that are much smaller today, is much better than Shea, and pretty good considering the capacity.

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Finally, here is the site plan. There is a new pedestrian bridge over the Grand Central Parkway, a medals plaza using the Unisphere as the backdrop (which would be incredible), the new aquatic center as discussed, the USTA National Tennis Center and Shea Stadium to the North. A new tram would be installed to run people between the parking lot surrounding Shea Stadium and the Olympic Stadium. So Baseball (assuming it returns to the Olympics), Swimming and Diving, Track and Field, and Tennis could all be at the Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

I hope you like the plan, and I look forward to seeing those by others. See more at my website, Stadium Drawings

TS

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To scale, its 1 pixel per foot in paint. If a section is 25 rows deep (75 pixels) by 40 feet wide; take 40 ft *12 inches per foot=480

480 inches/20 inches per seat=24 seats wide*25 row deep=600 seats. Do this for all sections and add.

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To scale, its 1 pixel per foot in paint. If a section is 25 rows deep (75 pixels) by 40 feet wide; take 40 ft *12 inches per foot=480

480 inches/20 inches per seat=24 seats wide*25 row deep=600 seats. Do this for all sections and add.

Time to break out the pencil and paper.

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