Miller Park

American Family Field is a retractable roof stadium used primarily for baseball. It is located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just southwest of the intersection of Interstate 94 and Brewers Boulevard. It is the home of Major League Baseball's Milwaukee Brewers, and opened in 2001 as a replacement for Milwaukee County Stadium. The stadium was previously called Miller Park as part of a $40 million naming rights deal with Miller Brewing Company, which expired at the end of 2020.

American Family Field features North America's only fan-shaped convertible roof, which can open and close in less than 10 minutes. Large panes of glass allow natural grass to grow, augmented with heat lamp structures wheeled out across the field during the off-season.

Construction

American Family Field was one of the largest construction projects in Wisconsin history. It was built with US$290 million of public funds from a 0.1% sales tax that began January 1, 1996, and ended on March 31, 2020. The tax was applied on purchases in Milwaukee County and four surrounding counties: Ozaukee, Racine, Washington, and Waukesha. The tax was controversial, in part because of the notion of using public funds for a privately owned sports team. The state senator who cast the deciding vote in the funding bill, George Petak of Racine, lost a recall election based on his vote for the stadium.

On November 9, 1996, groundbreaking took place in a parking lot behind County Stadium. Originally scheduled to open in 2000, American Family Field's construction was delayed after three construction workers were killed in an accident on July 14, 1999. A Lampson Transi-lift crane (nicknamed "Big Blue") brought in to build the roof collapsed while lifting a 450-ton roof section during windy conditions. A camera crew was filming construction of the stadium on that day and captured the collapse on video as it occurred. Repair work and an investigation forced the Brewers to stay in County Stadium for one more year, until 2001. There was some talk of having the Brewers move to American Family Field in the middle of 2000, but it was determined that too many issues would need to be resolved for it to be a realistic possibility.

The stadium has a retractable roof, built in a unique fan-shaped style, with the roof panels opening and closing simultaneously in a sweeping manner from the first- and third-base sides toward center field. The complex and massive roof was a significant factor in the $392 million cost of the stadium. It allows the seating area to be heated warmer than the outside temperature when closed, allowing games to be played in inclement weather and in more comfortable conditions than an open-air stadium. For example, when it is freezing outside, the temperature inside will be . The idea of the stadium having a retractable roof had been considered right away in the initial design, as to help counter the unpredictable Wisconsin weather in the early spring and late autumn.

The design team was appointed after a design competition in the mid-1990s. The architectural concept for the stadium was developed by the Los Angeles-based sports and entertainment team NBBJ, who worked closely with a Los Angeles-based team of engineers Arup, who were responsible for all stages of the structural and building services engineering design for the stadium, with the exception of the mechanical mechanisms that move the roof structure. The original versions of these mechanisms were designed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America as part of a design and build contract, but they have now been replaced by new designs after their failure. The executive architect responsible for the delivery of the final stadium design was a Dallas-based team of HKS, Inc. In addition to these major players there were a significant contributions from local teams including Eppstein Uhen Architects.

The stadium design followed the trend of retro-designed ballparks with current amenities that began in 1992 with Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore.

The original grass playing surface was installed on March 10, 2001, using County Stadium's surface infield dirt and home plate transplanted into the new stadium.

The stadium was previously called Miller Park as part of a $40 million naming rights deal with Miller Brewing Company which expired at the end of 2020. Madison-based American Family Insurance purchased the naming rights in a new 15-year deal.

Structural challenges

The unconventional fan-shaped retractable roof has not been without complications. Major elements of the pivot system behind home plate and the outfield roof track have been replaced, even after the crane incident.

At the end of the 2006 season, the roof's bogie system was replaced at a cost of over $13 million. The 10 new, , bogies were paid for with money from the settlement between the stadium district and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of America. Six of the bogies weigh , while the four others weigh . The work was completed by lifting sections of the roof approximately with Enerpac hydraulic lifts, while a crane replaced the bogies individually. "The bogies will last for the life of the facility," said Mike Duckett, executive director of the then named Miller Park stadium district. The project was completed by the start of the 2007 season.

Another issue resulting from the design of the roof and the adjacent large glass panels is that, during day games when the roof is fully open, shadows cover home plate and the batters boxes, while the pitchers mound is in full sunlight. This was a safety concern for batters, and was addressed during the 2010 season, when it was determined a larger shadow would cover both home plate and the pitchers mound if only one half of the roof was opened. This tactic has since been discontinued.

Additions

In time for the 2006 season there were three additions to the stadium. Two sets of LED scoreboards were added. One replaced the formerly manually operated "out of town" scoreboards along the left and right field walls with a new set of LED scoreboards along the left-field wall. The new "out of town" scoreboards show the score of every Major League game on that day. A second-tier marquee scoreboard was also added along the bottom of the 300-level of the stadium stretching from foul pole to home plate to foul pole, with the portion closest to the foul lines used to provide open captions of announcements from the public address system and advertisements. The section of the second-tier scoreboard above home plate displays statistics for those unable to see the main scoreboard above the center-field wall. The final addition to American Family Field for the 2006 season was the addition of a field-level picnic area in the corner of right-field. The picnic area has a capacity of 75 and provides a place for fans to watch the game in a leisurely setting and be within feet of the right-fielder. Known first as the Mercedes-Benz Field Haus, the picnic area's name was changed to AirTran Airways Landing Zone in 2009, and to the ATI Club in 2012. In 2017, due to a contract dispute between ATI and the Brewers, it was apparently billed as the Right Field Patio until gaining its current sponsorship as the Aurora Health Care Bullpen in 2018.

During the 2007 season, as the Brewers got closer to the team record of home runs in a season, a home run counter was added to the right of the center field scoreboard. In the shape of a gas pump, the counter was sponsored by Citgo, whose name could be seen as a play on words for a home run (C-It-Go). The counter kept track of the home runs hit by the Brewers during the season and when a home run was hit, the player's name was shown on the display as well as the distance of the home run. The Citgo home run counter was removed after the 2009 season.

Early into the 2008 season, the Brewers also added a sponsored strikeout counter to the tier of the second deck of the right field bleachers, which illuminates a K when a Brewers' pitcher notches a strikeout and keeps track of how many strikeouts as a team the Brewers have. Prior to this addition, Bernie Brewer would hang strikeout K's from the railing of his club house, including backwards K's to denote a called strike three.

In 2009, American Family Field's outfield was replaced with "Lo-Mo" Kentucky bluegrass just like the infield was the prior year. The new turf, common in other ballparks around baseball, is denser and has a sand base, instead of the sand and clay mix under the original grass. The turf yields truer hops and fewer instances in which the baseball skips under an outfielder's glove than the previous turf. Also for the 2009 season, the Harley-Davidson Deck was opened on the field level of the stadium in left-center field.

During the off-season between 2010 and 2011, the stadium's original centerfield scoreboard (a smaller videoboard atop a larger black and amber message display board) was replaced by a full-length and full color Daktronics 1080p HD display board which is the ninth-largest screen among current MLB stadiums, along with a public address/sound system upgrade.

Attendance

From the year American Family Field opened in 2001, the Brewers have averaged 31,783 fans per game, or 2,574,423 per season, while placing 11th out of 30 franchises in total attendance, despite having only eight winning seasons through the 2019 season, and having won only two MLB playoff series in just five total series appearances, and having the smallest market size of any Major League city. In 2011, the Brewers set a franchise record of 3,071,373, and beginning in 2004 they have attracted at least two-million fans; an ongoing streak of 15 consecutive years, the 12th longest in Major League history. Prior to American Family Field, the previous such consecutive streak in Milwaukee baseball history was four years, from 1954 to 1957. From 2007–2019, the Brewers drew at least 2.5 million in attendance to American Family Field in 12 of 13 seasons..