Bjarke Ingels has gone back to the drawing board and released a revised version of the Oakland Athletics’ potential new home stadium. The new renderings come three weeks after plans surfaced for an aerial gondola that would link the waterfront ballpark at Howard Terminal to the larger Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system.
Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is working with executive architect Gensler and landscape architect James Corner Field Operations for the site’s green spaces. Rather than a walled-off compound, BIG has envisioned a public-facing, mixed-use “ballpark district” in the vein of Boston’s Fenway Center, or Colorado’s Coors Field–adjacent West Lot. The scheme is projected to bring housing, a business campus, retail, and recreational areas to the waterfront site.
The original scheme that BIG unveiled for the stadium last November was centered around a square ballpark topped with an occupiable green “ring” roof. Triangular housing clusters reminiscent of the firm’s Via 57 West would have been positioned at the stadium’s corners, and, judging from the renderings, a playground would have been located en route to the ballpark’s entrance.
The diamond-shaped plan received mixed reviews from the public and elected officials. In an open letter sent out Monday, the A’s president Dave Kaval laid out the benefits of the new, softer scheme. Namely, BIG has opened up views of the nearby waterfront while creating a “softer” approach to the stadium.
The surrounding towers, some of them up to 20 stories tall, have been reconfigured into more of a “stadium seating” arrangement and would slope down to face both the ballpark and the adjacent waterfront. Though the shape has changed, the airy, striated facade of the 34,000-seat stadium will remain.
As part of the A’s initiative to build on the site, the team has partnered with the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, a local environmental justice group, and will be presenting the West Oakland Environmental Justice bill to the state legislature. Howard Terminal, the location of the potential stadium, is currently a brownfield site with an industrial past, and soil and groundwater remediation will need to be completed before the A’s can break ground.
The team is aiming to begin construction in 2021 and open the park by 2024 but is still working to purchase the site from Alameda County and the city of Oakland.
