Hateco Park

San Diego's Petco Park is probably my least favorite of the new ballparks. In three or four visits, it seems like the experience is consistently less pleasant than need be.

Downtown San Diego isn't a particularly easy city to get around, less so if one follows the unhelpful "Petco Park" streetsigns which expel drivers well north of the stadium into a morass of overpriced, mostly unmanned parking lots. Once, we took the trolley to a game, but were provided incorrect information by transit personnel. The trolley's OK, but seems to create more people moving problems than it solves, effectively dividing the area into a stadium zone (Gaslamp) and a Harbor Drive/Convention Ctr zone of auto and pedestrian traffic, greatly challenged to get to Petco on the "other side of the tracks".

Once parked, or let off the trolley, we've had all sorts of problems gaining admittance to the ballpark. A couple years ago, we arrived at the CF gate from the north, hoping to wend our way to our lower level, third base seats by way of the Park in the Park - however we were denied admittance. Wrong gate apparently. A different visit, we tried to hop the escalator within the adjacent Omni Hotel to the park walkway. Big mistake. Wrong tickets. A third time, we tried to buy pregame tickets at the window, assuming it would be somewhat like BOB, with at least a dozen sales windows open. Um...no.  Two stinking windows for a 42K seat stadium, and a ridiculous line snaking down K Street for an unspectacular(ie non sellout) game. It's just not a very welcoming place.

Once inside, it's difficult and confusing to try and mosey from one area - or level - to another. Not impossible, but difficult, due to Rube Goldberg-like escalators and walkways and no centerfield concourse to complete a fan friendly 360' loop. If this was an 80 year old venue, I could understand it - maybe even call it charm. But why is a newly designed park so hostile to the notion of strolling around? Maybe they were trying to create intimacy by breaking things up on the concourse, but Petco is a surprisingly vast place for a 42K seat venue. Big field, big foul territory pushing the seating back, skyscraper high bleachers with an even higher scoreboard. Very little intimacy here.

The stadium structure also has a feel to it that it's supporters might call "airy" and I would call "cheap". I guess there were money issues during construction and it looks like they cut corners; not structurally necessarily, but in terms of eye catching embellishments that give a venue a unique sense of place. The Western Metal Supply warehouse incorporated into the design is certainly eye catching, but not in a good way, looking more like an over the top designer's contrivance to placate some local historical society than a genuine fixture the park has organically grown around. Bank One Ballpark's swimming pool, for all its intrinsic goofiness, fits into its aesthetic surroundings better than the San Diego warehouse. 

The biggest disappointment about Petco, perhaps, is it's orientation, due north from home plate, overlooking a mostly non-descript rise noteworthy for a few hi rise condos under perpetual construction. I understand about sun fields, but when one considers the park is rubbing shoulders with the vibrant Gaslamp district, couldnt a creative soul have afforded future millions a magnificent view of the "real" downtown or the Coronado Bridge spanning the bay ? It just seems like Petco wasted several opportunities to be a modern jewel - a place to make people ooh and ahhh. Like San Francisco with the bay, Colorado with the mountains, or several other venues overlooking downtowns. Add to that the spectacular weather and a pleasantly upbeat fan base, every corner of Petco Park reeks of "missed opportunity". And there are, literally, hundreds of corners.

Did I mention I like the fish tacos?

(photo courtesy of hotelchatter.com)