Spartanburg’s Fifth Third Park Demonstrates How PDL-Era MiLB Stadiums Have Improved Fan Experience

New Parks Are Roomier Than Ever

In the 21st century, stadiums have largely adopted a more open concourse design that allows fans to continue to see the field/game while walking around the stadium. But the concourses themselves were asked to do a lot, as they were both the main traffic arteries, spaces for concessions and a standing room area for fans taking in different views of the park. 

The idea remains an excellent one, but congestion often defeated some of the goals of these open concourse designs. The concourses were designed to encourage fans to check out the field from multiple angles and to wander around, but long lines and packed concourses discouraged getting up and exploring different areas of the park.

Much like the U.S. Interstate system, the answer has been to widen the traffic arteries. In Spartanburg’s Fifth Third Park (and other new designs), the concourses are extremely wide, allowing enough room for fans heading in either direction, plus room for small stand-up concession stands and their lines without halting traffic flow.

According to Hub City general manager Tyson Jeffers, feedback on the roomier layout has been positive.

“A comment that we’ve gotten a lot in these first two homestands of games is that, even with a full crowd, people still feel like they have space within the concourses to move about freely,” Jeffers said.

Concession Stands Are More Efficient & Fan-Friendly

In the WPA era, concession stands were afterthoughts. They were placed seemingly wherever there was space and plumbing. If stands caused traffic jams, so be it. 

The second wave of PBA-era stadiums fixed many of those problems but did so by putting the concession stands largely against the back walls of the concourses. An unintended result was the creation of new pinch points for traffic jams. Long lines meant fans were blocking other fans from crossing through the concourse. They also discouraged fans from making repeat trips to the concession stands.

Jeffers said the team was “really conscious” of potential foot traffic headaches in constructing the park.

“(With the concourse concessions) you might be making that person’s buying experience a little bit better while they’re waiting, but then you’re ruining someone else’s while they’re trying to get wherever they need to go,” Jeffers said, adding that the stadium’s property footprint helped make addressing traffic flow problems easier.

“It gave us the real estate to be able to do this. To be able to tuck (concessions) back beyond the concourse a little bit, create them in a marketplace style so that they flow a lot easier.”

Fifth Third Park puts the main concession stands into cutouts that extend off the back side of the concourse. Doing so ensures any lines are contained within the concession area without causing backups on the concourses. In the 1990s and 2000s, such construction would have meant fans couldn’t see the game. Today, television monitors line the area so fans can watch the broadcast if they don’t have a direct sightline to the field.

The concession stands themselves have also been updated. Traditional ballpark items such as popcorn, hamburgers and chicken sandwiches are self-serve fare.

“Each of those marketplaces have their own kitchen,” Jeffers said. “So they’re cooking hot food and just sliding it out. You’re grabbing it, you’re going. There’s always a little bit of fear about what happens when it sits there, but our food and beverage department has done an amazing job to make sure that they’re pushing it out when people need it. And those people can grab it and keep going.”

The grab-and-go setup reduces lines by allowing fans to quickly get their food, scan and pay at a self-checkout touch-screen display and then quickly return to their seats. The end effect, Jeffers said, is fans feel more comfortable in their decision to get up from game action to buy food.

“If you know you’re going to have to stand in line, you’re making a conscious decision of ‘Do I need that extra hot dog?’ You might say it’s not worth the minutes that I’m going to miss some of the game.”

For MiLB teams, in addition to increased concession stand sales, the marketplace layout may also reduce employee head count. Not dramatically, as the self-service food areas need continual restocking, and the self-pay kiosk area needs multiple employees supervising and helping any customers who have issues, but it’s a change from traditionally-staffed concession counters.

Parks Are Year-Round Facilities

It’s hard to imagine any team building a new park in the 2020s without a multi-purpose club-level area. Such a space can serve as an upscale restaurant/bar during games, but just as importantly, it provides an all-weather area for non-game day activities.

Spartanburg features a large club area on the second level that serves as a restaurant/bar/gathering place during games. It can also be used for conferences, wedding receptions, proms and most any other event a group could conceive. It has a full-service kitchen/bar as well as an outdoor patio area for events that want inside-outside versatility. In an era when teams are looking to increase the number of calendar dates the stadium is used, these types of multi-purpose areas are becoming must-haves in both new and retro-fitted ballparks.

“We’re providing an unbelievable experience and a top-tier experience for our fans at baseball games,” Jeffers said. “But then we have an amazing space that we can utilize on non-game days. And so we’re talking about our facility operating 365 days out of the year or as close to that as possible.

“Conferences coming in, chamber events, wedding receptions—all of those things. And it’s built in a way that one gives it the square footage and the layout to be able to accommodate those. But then it also has the technologies to be able to execute every type of event that you can think of.”

Seating Areas Are More Intimate

Under the old PBA rules, different MiLB levels had different seating requirements. A Triple-A stadium had to have 10,000 seats, a Double-A stadium required 6,000 and a Class A stadium needed 4,000. Those rules do not exist in the current PDL era, so individual teams can decide how big to build their stadium bowls.

Fifth Third Park’s seating bowl reflects this. The stadium has roughly 3,500 fixed seats, although group areas and berms mean up to 5,000 can get into the park.

“All of that was built intentionally to make sure that it always felt like that place is rocking and rolling every single night,” Jeffers said. “There was a stretch there in the 90s where people overbuilt. On July 4th, it’s great, but it makes your normal night crowd feel like it kind of loses something in exchange. To build for those anomaly games—opening night, the Fourth of July—you’re building for two days out of your year. We built for every day.”

There’s A Lot Fans Never See

Modern PDL requirements were focused on items for MiLB players, staff and player development. For example, the required size of visitor clubhouses was increased significantly. There must now be dining areas for the players. There must be bathrooms that are easily accessible from the dugouts.

Stadiums are required to have air-conditioned batting cages/pitching tunnels and enlarged weight rooms and storage space, as well as locker rooms for female staff and umpires.

Ballpark lighting and field requirements have also been increased.

These are non-negotiable requirements for both upgraded existing stadiums and new construction, so much of what’s been done in the bowels of a stadium will be similar to what’s been upgraded elsewhere. But with a new build, it’s possible to leave room for further expansion, new loading docks and other touches that may be tougher to add to an existing facility.