Nationals Park – Greenest of All Parks

HOK teamed up with Devrouax & Purnell Architecture should be proud of the new stadium to house the Nationals. The engineering used should be incorporated into all Major League stadiums to be built an used to renovate existing parks.

Often known as the Green Catherdrals ML ballparks can create a huge environmental imprint. With 50,000 people producing nothing but garbage for 3 hours and the amount of electricity to power the lights, scoreboard, air conditioning etc baseball games are far from green. In 2002 MUD.com’s attended Comerica Park where the gimmick was “1800’s Baseball” what this meant was savings for the Tigers on excessive scoreboard use, audio etc. I was at a game at Yankee Stadium in 2006 where the NYC power grid was threatened due pressure from a string of days of 100F+ temperatures. The Yankees, to save on power, decided not to use the main scoreboard for an afternoon game. Thier hitters didn’t save on power, spanking the Jays and Shaun Marcum 6-1.

Nationals Park is the first ballpark to meet the US Green Building Coucil guidelines. Nationals Park will be the first to be rated by LEED:

“The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria.”

Here are some stats I found at http://curlyw.blogspot.com/2007/07/getting-greener-at-nationals-park.html

-Field lights that will save 21% energy over the lights used at RFK
-An advanced filtration system to keep trash out of the runoff from the hosed-down stands after each game
-The use of 28% recycled materials, including 95% recycled steel, in the construction of the stadium itself
-The recycling of 5,500 tons of construction waste from the ballpark site
-Receptacles for fans to recycle metal and glass

This park went up in no time, less than 2 year at a cost of around $600 million. This is a large sum for a park without a retractable roof. Sometimes it isn’t easy being green.

Anyways, congratulations to the Nationals and perhaps this franchise will finally find its way out of the wilderness and have some stability. Good luck vs the Braves on March 30th.

Reposer dans la paix les Expos.

The photo of Nationals Park was used without permission from andrewclem.com. Check it out for all ballpark information.