Steve Webb
Janet Marie Smith visits the Bleed Los podcast
LOS ANGELES — If you think the players are stoked for an opening day at full capacity at Dodger Stadium, just what til you hear what the woman who practically rebuilt the place has to say. Janet Marie Smith, one of the visionaries responsible for the resurgence in urban ballparks in the last thirty years (starting with her baby in Baltimore, Camden Yard) is the driving force behind the amazing rebuild of the Centerfield Plaza at Chavez Ravine, and she is dying to show it off.
“We’re ready for it!”
In a wide-ranging interview with our very own Bleed Los podcast team, the Dodgers’ executive vice president of planning and development , was beaming with enthusiasm at the prospects that 2022 will provide.
“We’re so excited about this new Centerfield Plaza, the new ‘front door’ as my boss Stan Kasten calls it,” she said. “Dodger Stadium has never had a front door, never had the ability for fans to move 360 around the building, and so we did this big project that was scheduled to debut in 2020, of course we know what happened to that season, and last year, because of Covid… it just felt like we never hit our stride… it feels like last year was a trial run, but we’re just so excited for 2022 and the prospect of hosting the All-Star game, we’re ready for it!”
Smith’s connection with the team goes back a decade
The renovation of Dodger Stadium has been a ten-year project, started shortly after the new ownership group took the reins. And Smith has been there every step of the way. “You may remember,” she says, “when Stan Kasten became the president in 2012, the very first thing we did was expand the locker rooms and add concession stands and restrooms, so both the players and the fans get a good first impression. It’s like the old adage goes, ‘you only get one chance to make a good first impression.’
Still Smith credits a close partnership with the city of Los Angeles in getting all the projects done in a timely manner, and she is quick to point out that all of these changes have been made while keeping the integrity of the original structure of Dodger Stadium still intact. “Our landscape architects and builders have worked very hard so that anything that we do still feels like Dodger Stadium; it doesn’t feel like a new intrusion.”
Smith also indicated that she was “super-excited” about the addition of the new Sandy Koufax statue, which will be unveiled this summer to take its place along the statue of Jackie Robinson in the Center Field Plaza. She chuckled when asked if there were going to be any “criteria” used to determine who gets a future statue in the plaza. “That’s a total TBD!” she laughed, pleading the fifth. “It’s like Stan Kasten always says to me, ‘Don’t you have enough to worry about today?”
Well, on behalf of Dodger fans everywhere, Janet, thank you for worrying about our stadium and making it the best place in the world to watch a baseball game. If there is a Hall of Fame for stadium architects, Janet Marie Smith is a first ballot inductee in our book.
For the full interview or any of the great Bleed Los podcast episodes, check out their webpage. The great guests keep coming fast and furious. Make Bleed Los and DodgerBeat your go-to sources for all things Dodger this season!
