Blue Jays Finally Get to Use New Nest With a Convertible Top

At the beginning -- which was 1977 or 1982 or 1984, depending on which Skydome historian you are speaking with -- there was this rather simple and relatively economical idea: Build a domed stadium, and do it for $150 million.

Then, somebody got the bright idea that what this fair city’s sports fans really needed was a stadium that would be equally comfortable in April chill and August swelter. So, the rush was on to design a stadium featuring North America’s first retractable lid.

But when you think about it, what’s so great about a technologically unique stadium if you can’t see the playing field from the window of your hotel room? Back to the drawing board to add a 350-room luxury hotel, which includes 70 suites that have clear views of the action.

Hold it right there. Even with a moving roof, a one-of-a-kind hotel, a $710,000 cartoon sculpture of baseball fans looming over the stadium entrance, the largest video scoreboard in the world, TV monitors that beam pictures of bullpen activity to the dugouts and a pitching mound that can be raised and lowered in a matter of minutes, this still is not the complete sports and entertainment pleasure palace.

Something was missing.

Actually, several somethings.

So, a 125-seat movie theater was added.

So was a 300-foot bar overlooking the field.

And two McDonald’s, a 700-seat restaurant and a Hard Rock Cafe.

And a trendy health club where initiation and annual membership fees will lighten well-to-do patrons to the tune of about $4,000.

Ah, now that’s a stadium.

Monday night, after almost a decade of planning and construction, the Skydome, with its official price tag climbing toward $500 million, will open its doors, and perhaps, its roof. In the baseball opener, the Toronto Blue Jays and Milwaukee Brewers will play, and the city will breathe deeply and happily.

And why not?

The early indications all point to the stadium getting off on just the right concrete footing. As you’d expect, all 53,000 seats for the game long ago were gobbled up by baseball fans and curiosity seekers. But the rush to experience the Skydome apparently will not end there.

The Blue Jays’ first seven games at the Skydome, including four against the woeful Detroit Tigers, are virtual sellouts, and club officials are predicting average crowds of more than 40,000 for the rest of the season. (That is an improvement of some 25 percent from the Jays’ average attendance for the 26 games they played this year at Exhibition Stadium).

The financial success of the sometimes covered, sometimes not, stadium also depends heavily on it being booked for more than 200 dates each year, according to Skydome officials, and here, too, the stadium seemingly is meeting projections. In its first month of operation, for instance, the stadium has bookings for 18 dates. Included are 10 baseball games, a motorcycle race, workouts for the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League, who also will play their home games at the Skydome, and a Rod Stewart concert Thursday.

The Skydome’s downtown location also is expected to give a boost to Toronto’s thriving business district. Within three blocks of the dome are the looming CN tower, Toronto’s convention center, a 25-story luxury hotel, a symphony hall and numerous shops, restaurants and parking lots. All stand to gain considerably from the business generated by the Skydome, particularly the parking-lot owners.

Only about 500 parking spaces are planned for the Skydome lot, and more than 300 of those will go to sky-box renters. There are roughly 17,000 parking spots within walking distances of the park, however. The lot directly across the street from the stadium is promising game-day prices of $15 per car.

All dollar figures are Canadian dollars, which are worth about 85 cents of an American dollar.

It is safe to say the Skydome will mean a lot of money to a lot of people. But even the stadium’s most ardent supporters say they are hard-pressed to predict exactly how much.

“Megabucks,” said Toronto Sun publisher Paul Godfrey, who as chairman of Metro Toronto -- sort of a super mayor -- led the charge to bring an expansion baseball team to the city in the 1970s and later championed the stadium project. “This facility will mean multimillions of dollars for the Toronto economy.”

“What you are looking at down there is a third-generation sports facility,” said Ron Willoughby, who represents a consortium of 28 corporations who have contributed $140 million to the Skydome project. “It’s a destination, and it will become one of the major tourist attractions of the city.”

Despite the seeming frenzy, not everyone in the city is flipping his lid over the retractable dome.

Toronto city councilman Howard Levine appears pained by the stadium, which he said is being built in the wrong location and at a time when the city should be concentrating on issues such as affordable housing and mass transit.

“Toronto has the reputation of being a livable city, but increasingly it’s becoming unlivable,” Levine said. “We’ve got problems that come with being a maturing metropolitan area, and we can’t come to terms with them by focusing all our energy on the Skydome.”

If Levine is concerned about Toronto’s social agenda, he appears tormented by another likely effect of the Skydome: traffic. The decision to put the stadium in the downtown district may be stimulating businesses, but its location has every cab driver in the city contemplating traffic backups to Niagara Falls.

“From a planning standpoint, it is a horribly wrong location, in the center of an ever-increasingly congested city,” said Levine, who represents 39,000 voters in a district north of downtown.

Even the Skydome’s opponents cannot shout too loudly about the stadium’s exorbitant price tag, which exceeds original estimates by about 300 percent. The city government and province of Ontario have contributed $30 million each. The rest of the funding, roughly $470 million, is coming from the participating corporations and bank financing.

The 28 corporate “partners,” including McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Nabisco and Nestle, each has contributed $5 million to the project, for which it gets a sky box, parking spaces and the right of first refusal on stadium contracts that relate to its products. For instance, McDonald’s got first crack at the food concession; stadium management could have considered other bids only if it had been unable to strike a deal with the fast-food giant.

Despite the fierce corporate competition, Nestle crunch bars and McDonald’s first-ever hot dogs probably will not be the highlight of a visit to the Skydome. That distinction will be reserved for the first retractable lid ever constructed on a major, multipurpose stadium -- the tennis center that is host to the Australian Open generally is credited with being the first sports facility so built -- and one that should make the rain-, snow- and hailouts that have plagued the Blue Jays throughout their 12-year history a thing of the past.

The roof is made of four pieces, which fold neatly atop the outfield wall of the stadium. Together, they span more than eight acres and weigh the equivalent of about 5,480 cars. The roof sections, three of which are movable, sit on bogies, or casters, that glide electronically on a railroad track along the rim of the stadium.

The roof driver, who sits at a control board that features 32 orange, red and green monitoring lights, can move the pieces individually or in sequence. When the roof is closing, panel 1, an eggish structure moves from its position on the south end of the stadium, along the west side, and locks into position on the south end.

Panels 2 and 3, which are roundish bands, then inch southward, linking the end pieces and completing the changeover from open to closed. The transformation, which has taken as long as 45 minutes while technicians master the subtleties of roof driving, eventually will be completed in as little as 20 minutes, stadium officials said.

Willoughby, who has been with the project throughout the nearly three years of actual construction, is one of the few who has seen the roof move. He described it with the passion one might use to report on a man buttering toast. “It is not quite like watching grass grow, but it is very quiet,” he said.

The moving roof solves the biggest problem facing baseball in Toronto: the elements. Although foul weather has postponed only 29 games in the 12-year history of the franchise, the Blue Jays routinely play in teeth-chattering conditions until deep into May. And on April 7, 1977, the team made its major-league, home-opening debut in a driving snowstorm.

Still, the sliding roof raises a whole new set of concerns. Among them: Who will decide whether a game will be played indoors or outdoors? When will that decision be made? And what if bad weather comes up suddenly; are Blue Jays fans in for roof-closing delays?

According to Howard Starkman, the baseball team’s director of public relations, Blue Jays officials will contact the local weather service several hours before a scheduled home game to ask for a forecast. If rain or snow is threatened, the officials then will decide whether the roof should be closed. And what of the other questions posed by the Skydome? Will McDonald’s impose a limit of two tossed salads per fan? Is it permissible to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” while lounging in the health-club Jacuzzi?

And, of course, what if the roof gets stuck?

Don’t ask. At least, not today.