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Bucking tradition Wrigley renovations threaten view from rooftops
CHICAGO (AP) -- Perhaps nowhere in baseball does tradition run deeper than at Wrigley Field, where a battle against expansion is being fought from -- and over -- the rooftops. Fans watching Chicago Cubs games in seats on roofs across the street from the ivy-covered park are a familiar sight to television viewers around the country. Once those fans were local residents in lawn chairs, a beer in one hand and a bratwurst in the other, but today the rooftops are controlled by business people who charge as much as $100 a head. The Cubs face a battle over their plan to expand the 39,059-seat jewel of a park on several fronts, but their proposal to raise the height of the bleachers would cut into the view from the roofs -- and cost some serious money to those business people who have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their informal skyboxes. Cubs officials say they are aware that love of the old-style park, which didn't even have lights until the 1980s, is almost an obsession in the surrounding neighborhood, known as Wrigleyville. But they see that as a separate issue. "I don't think we look at the rooftops as very sympathetic," said Mark McGuire, the Cubs' executive vice president of business operations. Neither do some fans. "I believe they're stealing a product from the Cubs," said John Crouch, whose connection to the team includes helping on the brickwork for the statue of the late announcer Harry Caray that stands outside the park. "They're parasites." But regardless of how fans feel about the buildings' owners, they have made it clear the rooftops are a big part of what makes Wrigley unique. "You used to see Harry Caray panning the rooftops," said Bernard Hansen, the alderman whose ward includes Wrigley. "It was like the ivy." McGuire knows this and he knows it's a dangerous and potentially costly game when you take a hammer to a park that, as fan Marcus Tollerud put it, "is so perfect you get 40,000 (fans) out here in September when the Cubs are in last place." That helps explain McGuire's comments at a recent community meeting attended by hundreds of skeptical Cubs fans. Not only was he careful to assure them that the proposed changes will not alter Wrigley's character, but he wanted them to know the new bleacher seats would not "obliterate" the view of the rooftops from the stands. As for the building owners, they know both the warm feelings the fans have for the rooftops and the not-so-warm feelings some have for their businesses. So, like the Cubs, who hired a public relations firm to help make their case, the owners have hired a PR team of their own to convince the fans and the city that the issue is bigger than their lucrative enterprises. "The rooftops are part of the attraction of Wrigley," said George Loukas, an owner. A member of the owners' public relations team, Ken Jakubowski, goes even further: "There's a social contract between the neighborhood and the team," he said. The view from the rooftops, he said, has been part of that contract since 1937 when the team owner instructed the architect of the new bleachers not to obstruct the views from the rooftops. How this will play at City Hall remains to be seen. Hansen, the alderman for the area, said he thinks the city will allow the Cubs to add seats to the bleachers. The question is how many and how high they will go. The city is withholding judgment until the Cubs formally submit their plans. Joel Werth, spokesman for the city's planning department, said the city doesn't object to renovations, but won't let the team harm "a city treasure, maybe a national treasure." Are the rooftop bleachers the kind of "character defining features" Werth said the city will see fit to protect? Too soon to say, he said. For his part, McGuire said the Cubs will do everything they can to protect the character of the nation's most cherished baseball park. But increasing the size of the bleachers, which at $20 a ticket could mean more than $3.4 million to team revenues, is a must. "We're trying very hard not to move from Wrigley Field," he said.
When asked if leaving was a possibility, he simply said again, ``We're trying very hard not to move from Wrigley Field.''
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