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Created by:
Jeff LeCrone

Dodd Stadium
Norwich Connecticut

Team: Norwich Navigators
Affiliate: San Francisco Giants
Opened: 1995
Capacity: 6,275
Visited: 2000
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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. 

 

 

 

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