A question about the enormous size of the proposed Yankee Stadium

Question: The footprint of the proposed Yankee Stadium is vastly larger than the present stadium. Although it would be so much larger than the old one, the proposed stadium would actually seat fewer fans. What exactly makes it so much larger?

Neil deMause's (of Field of Schemes) answer:

Mostly it's luxury boxes and concessions space. It doesn't take much room to set up a hot dog griddle; if you want pizza ovens and deli counters and the like, however, suddenly you need something close to a full-service kitchen, and there's no room for that in the current Yankee Stadium.

The way the Red Sox are dealing with this with the renovation of the much smaller Fenway Park is to shift the kitchen facilities into the building next door, with the food being brought over to stands in the park proper. There's no reason the Yankees couldn't do something like this, except that they would rather have an all-new place.

Another issue is that old stadiums like Yankee generally have the decks stacked on top of each other. In new ones (including Steinbrenner's proposal), the upper decks are set back, partly so that the people in the lower decks don't have their view of the sky obscured, partly to make room for more luxury boxes and "club seats" (season tickets that are sold like luxury boxes). It doesn't take much geometry to realize that this creates a *much* bigger stadium footprint -- and, as a side benefit, more concessions space underneath the set-back upper deck.

Finally, all that space is so that the Yankees can bring all the souvenir sales, food sales, bag checks, etc. inside the gates so that they're getting the money, not Stan's or the Spiral Fries Deli or whatever. New stadium design is geared to ensure that every penny spent by fans goes to the team, not to any merchants in the surrounding neighborhood.

For an even more complete analysis, including a diagram to show the difference in size between the two stadiums, click the above headline to be taken directly to the Field of Schemes website.