Citi Field

About Citi Field

Citi Field is the new baseball park for the New York Mets that is being built in Willets Point in the New York City borough of Queens as a replacement for the adjacent Shea Stadium, which was itself constructed in 1964 adjacent to the site of the 1964-1965 World's Fair. It has been designed by HOK Sport. The $850 million Citi Field is being subsidized with $450 million in public funds . Citi Field will reportedly be granted the All-Star Game in 2013. The first regular season home game will be on April 13, 2009 against the San Diego Padres.

The original plans for what will now be Citi Field were created as part of New York City's 2012 Summer Olympics bid. After plans for a West Side Stadium fell through, New York looked for an alternate stadium to host the opening and closing ceremonies. The Olympic stadium project was estimated to cost $2.2 billion with $180 million provided by New York City and New York State. If New York had won the bid, the stadium would have been expanded to host the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as other sporting events.

The new stadium is planned to have a capacity of 45,000 (42,500 seats, ~2,500 standing room). The exterior facade and entranceway rotunda will be reminiscent of Ebbets Field (which was long sought by Mets owner Fred Wilpon, a Brooklyn native). Citi Field will have an interior design that evokes design features of recent ballparks, most notably Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore. The projected cost of the new stadium and other infrastructure improvements is $610 million, with the Mets picking up $420 million of that amount. The agreement includes a 40-year lease that will keep the Mets in New York until 2049. The stadium will be accessible via the Long Island Rail Road (Shea Stadium station) and the New York City Subway 7 train (Willets Point-Shea Stadium station), as with the current facility.