The refresh the Vancouver Canadians’ ballpark will include new facility standards from MLB and construction will continue all season
There are 90 days until the Vancouver Canadians open their season. It’s going to be a hectic 90 days for team general manager Allan Bailey and the construction crew revamping Nat Bailey Stadium.
If you didn’t know it was the venerable ballpark, you could easily confuse the Nat right now with the site of a highrise apartment tower under construction.
There’s heavy machinery on the field. There grass has been pulled up. The concession area near the main entrance has become this hodgepodge of assorted odds and ends, a storage outpost as clubhouses on both sides are expanded and require their gear to be elsewhere.
They’re taking it back to the studs at the Nat, the result of needing to reach facility standards introduced when Major League Baseball gave the minors a complete rethink coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2020.
“We’re trying to be compliant with the Major League Baseball but we’re also trying to be a good custodian, so that a nice, old stadium gets an upgrade and stays relevant going into the future,” Bailey said of the Nat, which turns 74 this coming July.
“Will we be ready for opening day? That’s the plan,” Bailey said with a somewhat anxious smile.
Construction will continue throughout the season added Bailey, who’s been with the club in some facet since 2007 and has had the GM gig since 2018. The facility upgrade plan includes adding a building down the first-base foul line where the barbecue area used to be. It will feature things like batting cages and weight rooms to comply with the new standards. It will include a rooftop viewing area for fans, but that won’t be in play for this coming season, with Bailey estimating that the building won’t be fully functional until December 2025.
DBH has yet to respond to email inquires.
The park board hasn’t responded to email requests for an update.
This is going on throughout minor league baseball. The Hillsboro Hops, who are a C’s league rival located just outside Portland, broke ground on a new $120 million stadium in August in their bid to meet facility standards. It’s slated to be completed by December 2025 and open for the 2026 season.
A little farther down the west coast, the Modesto Nuts of the single-A California League were sold by the Seattle Mariners to DBH in December and they’ll be moving the squad — which will remain a Mariners affiliate — to San Bernardino in 2026. Last summer, it was announced that the Mariners and the city of Modesto couldn’t come to an agreement on upgrading the stadium there.
The C’s were DBH’s 17th minor league team when their deal was finalized. DBH now has 41 teams, or just over one third of all farm teams. They have tight ties with MLB considering that DBH CEO Peter Freund was hired by MLB in 2020 to advise on redoing the minor league system.
DBH’s fields manager has visited the Nat and Bailey says he was told “we were further along that he thought we were going to be.”
The field at the Nat is being levelled. The grass for the field is being grown off-site by a Fraser Valley company, according to Bailey, and installation will begin in March. Artificial turf would have some benefits for non-game activities, he said, but “you put that in here, it takes away from the stadium.”
“We wanted to keep that retro feel that we’ve had at the ballpark and maintain that integrity,” Bailey added.
Bailey believes that when the new building on the first-base side is complete “the fan experience from the rooftop patio will be incredible.” It’s all just going to take some time, though.
“I think the big challenge for fans this coming year will be parking around the ballpark with construction continuing,” he said. “We’re going to work on some solutions to make it as easy as possible. We’re going to work with our neighbours so that people going to the community centre and other venues near here are able to do their events with as little disruption as possible.
“It’s a challenge when you look at the constraints of this ballpark and the space around it. There’s not a lot room, but if you want to keep baseball in Vancouver these are the things we have to do.”
@steve-ewen.bsky.social