Program of Renovation Is Set

Busch Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball and football teams, will get an interior face lift under a plan approved by its owner.

The plan includes several measures designed to satisfy Bill Bidwill, the owner of the football team who has complained the stadium is too small. However, the football team objected to being mentioned in the news release announcing the plan.

The plan calls for replacement of all the stadium’s existing seats, addition of approximately 3,000 new seats and installation of 14 new deluxe boxes.

The improvements will bring the number of seats in the stadium to 54,400 and the number of deluxe boxes to 53.

The plan was approved by the board of Civic Center Corp., a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch Co. which owns the baseball Cardinals.

The stadium’s current 51,392 seats were part of the original equipment installed during construction 20 years ago. The installation of the new seats will begin this summer, with completion expected by April of next year.

A spokesman for Civic Center said the installation of the new seats will not disrupt the baseball schedule for this year. He said much of the work will be done when the Cardinals are out of town.

The 3,000 new seats will be created by adding new rows as well as shrinking the present size of the loge and upper deck seats by an inch in width.