DC -- Southeast -- Washington Nationals ballpark -- Exterior:
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon
underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
- Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.129.39.55 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
- Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
- Wikipedia Description: Nationals Ballpark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nationals Ballpark (or Nationals Park) is the planned new ballpark for the Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball. The facility is projected to open in April 2008. It will be located along the Anacostia River in southeast Washington, D.C., and will replace the Nationals' current facility, RFK Stadium. The new ballpark is being designed by HOK Sport and Devrouax & Purnell Architects and Planners, will seat 41,000 fans, and is projected to cost at least $535 million. It will sit across the river from the D.C. United's proposed soccer-specific stadium at Poplar Point. The site is Metro-accessible via the Navy Yard station. Fans will be able to view the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol building from certain upper deck seats and terraces of the stadium. It is unknown if the naming rights will be sold to a corporation.
Location:
The ballpark is being constructed on a 21-acre plot of land in the Near Southeast neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Although it is near the Anacostia River, the site is landlocked, bounded by South Capitol Street to the west, N Street to the north, 1st Street SE to the east, and Potomac Avenue to the south. The park will face to the north-northeast, in the general direction of the U.S. Capitol (located approximately 15 blocks away) and Union Station.
The park's orientation was controversial, because some expected it to have a full view of the Capitol's dome. However, construction of proposed stadium parking garages and future commercial development on plots north of the ballpark will block direct view of the Capitol from most seats in the park. The Capitol, as well as the Washington Monument, will be viewable from certain sections of the park's upper deck.
Transportation:
Nationals Ballpark will be located just one block south of M Street, SE, a main (and until very recently, underused) artery bisecting Southeast and Southwest Washington, D.C. The ballpark will also be accessible from I-395 via the Southwest Freeway, and from I-295 via the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, which carries South Capitol Street across the Anacostia River. The Douglass Bridge is being rebuilt so that South Capitol Street will continue at ground level past the stadium (It is currently 15 feet above ground level).
The new ballpark will also be accessible via the Navy Yard station, which is served by Metro's Green Line. The station, which is located a block and a half from the ballpark's future gate in left-center field, is expected to be heavily used by fans on game day. Plans call for the Navy Yard station's ballpark entrance and farecard mezzanine to be expanded, along with the addition of an extra escalator and elevator to handle the crowds.
Other options, such as Metrobus access, satellite parking arrangements, and even watertaxi service, have been discussed in the media, but no specific plans have been announced to date.
Financing and controversy:
Financing for the stadium was expected to be provided by a banking syndicate led by Deutsche Bank. However, finalization of the financing deal, as of December 2005, stalled due to complex negotiations between the city government, MLB as owner of the team, and the bank. The bank requested a letter of credit or comparable financial guarantee against stadium rent to cover risks such as poor attendance or terrorism. The requested guarantee was $24 million, $6 million for each of the four years of stadium construction. The city had requested that MLB provide the guarantee. The financing situation was since solved and construction began in May 2006.
Construction:
The site of Nationals Ballpark was chosen by Mayor Anthony Williams as the most viable of four possibilities for a future ballpark. The ballpark's design was released to the public at a press conference on March 14, 2006. Ground breaking was in early 2006.
The ballpark will have 41,000 seats and will feature 66 suites, all around the infield. Other amenities include the "Oval Office bar." Team President Stan Kasten also said that the team might sell the naming rights to the levels of the luxury suites, which bear the names of presidents Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. While the city has agreed to spend up to $611 million dollars, Kasten has stated that the principal owners, the Lerner family, are spending tens of millions of dollars more on "jazzing up the park."
On March 13, 2007, president of the Washington Nationals, Stan Kasten announced that not only was the Nationals new ballpark on schedule to be ready by Opening Day 2008, but there would be a grove of cherry blossoms located just beyond the left field bleachers. Kasten stated that the cherry blossoms will provide a look that Americans only associate with the nation's capital.
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
- Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].