SkyDome
The SkyDome has been officially renamed to the Rogers Centre. It is a
multi-purpose stadium in Toronto, Ontario, situated next to the CN Tower near the
shores of Lake Ontario. It is home to Major League Baseball's Toronto Blue Jays and
the Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts. While it is primarily a sports
venue, Rogers Centre also hosts other large-scale events such as conventions,
trade fairs, and concerts.
Rogers Centre is also noted for being the first US stadium to have a fully-retractable
motorized roof, as well as a 348-room hotel attached to it, with 70 rooms overlooking
the field. It is also the most recent North American major-league stadium built to
accommodate both football and baseball, although some of the newer baseball parks
have been known to host the occasional college football game.
Capacity
For a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game, the stadium can hold 50,598. It holds 45,000 for the CFL Toronto Argonauts, 53,506 for the Grey
Cup and 28,708 when Raptor games were once played in the dome. As you can tell from the photo above, some seats are true nose bleeds
with horrible views. This is one of the problems with playing baseball in a multi-sport stadium. There is a reason why this is the last of the
multi-sport stadiums to be built in North America.
Dimensions
Left Field Line - 328 ft (100 m)
Left-Center Power Alley - 375 ft (114 m)
Center Field - 404 ft (122 m)
Right-Center Power Alley - 375 ft (114 m)
Right Field Line - 328 ft (100 m)
Backstop - 60 ft (18 m)
SkyDome Facts and Figures
- The stadium roof actually has a patent, preventing its design from being easily copied: U.S. Patent #05167097. Officially registered on
December 1st 1992 to dome architects Rob Robbie, and Chris Allen.
- The original mascot of the stadium was a turtle by the name of Domer.
- The McDonald's at SkyDome was the first McDonald's in the world to sell hotdogs.
- When the retractable roof is open, people standing on the glass floor of the observation deck of the nearby CN Tower can look down on the
field.
- 50 million people have visited Rogers Centre
- When the roof is open: 91% of the seats and 100% of the field is open to the sky and covers 3.2 hectares (8 acres).
- The roof weighs 11,000 tons and it is held together by 250,000 bolts.
- When the stadium first opened, the TTC was worried about the challenge of moving the large crowds. So as a way to streamline the entry to
the subway and to encourage public transit use, to the stadium all tickets for the first 30 days also worked as Metropasses.
- The stadium's inward-looking hotel rooms have regular two-way windows, yielding instances of what some could consider indecent
exposure. When SkyDome first opened, a couple engaging in sexual intercourse was televised on the scoreboard Jumbotron during a
baseball game. Days later, a man was caught masturbating during a game in full view of the packed stands. The man, later tracked down by
a Sports Illustrated reporter, calmly said, "I thought they were one-way windows." Patrons now have to sign contracts stipulating that they will
not perform any lewd acts within view of the stadium.
- The stadium corporation has been requested to help in the planning of other venues from the U.S., Netherlands, England, Australia, New
Zealand, to Singapore, China and Germany (Source Rogers Centre Press release).
- It is the most expensive stadium in the both the CFL and MLB, constructed at a price of 570 million Canadian dollars. But the MLB record
expected to be passed by the New Yankee Stadium, scheduled for completion in 2009, at a cost of 800 million US. However if the cost of the
SkyDome in 1984 is adjusted for inflation, it worth now roughly 1.05 Billion Dollars CAD, or 911 Million US.
