The first thing that
struck me about Dodd Stadium is how much it is like Prince
George's Stadium in Bowie, Maryland. Just as at Bowie, the
concourse is at the top of the seating bowl and below a tier of luxury
boxes.
Both stadiums are built
into the side of a hill, which allows fans to walk down to their seats
upon entry to the park and creates grassy areas beyond the seats down
each line. Both parks even have similar outfield views, as very
little other than the tops of trees can be seen beyond the triple-tiered
advertising of the outfield wall. Even one of the differences
provides a similarity of sorts: there is no carousel for the kids
here, as there is in Bowie, but there is a carousel-shaped veranda in
almost exactly the same area.
There are a few
differences between the two, however. The biggest one is in their
size, as Prince George's Stadium seats about 4,000 more people. There is
no restaurant on the luxury box level here, as in Bowie, but there is an
arcade on the concourse level, the only park I have seen thus far with
such an attraction.
In the final analysis,
Dodd Stadium fares very similarly to Prince George's. It is
relatively new, clean, and comfortable, but there is very little to
distinguish it from other new stadiums that have been built in the past
several years. It's a good stadium, but from an architectural
standpoint, there's very little to make it special.
2005 Update: Since
my first year of doing this (1999), I have discovered that similarity
among stadiums is a common phenomenon. While there are unique
designs out there (see, for example, the parks in Erie,
Altoona, and Zebulon)
the majority of the newer parks are built roughly using this
template.
