USA TODAY Sports Weekly features Jimmy John's Field

Jimmy John's Field in Utica, Michigan, designed by Pendulum, was one of the parks in the running for the 17th annual BaseballParks.com Ballpark of the Year award. Joe Mock covered the field of candidates in USA TODAY Sports Weekly on August 10, 2016.

Sports Weekly described the park's origin as two people arriving at the same idea from opposite directions: "Longtime sports executive Andy Appleby had a business plan for a start-up baseball league that he thought couldn't miss. Noted ballpark architect Jonathan Cole had long wanted to implement truly novel design concepts in a new baseball stadium. The two joined forces to create Jimmy John's Field in Utica, Mich., home to all three teams in Appleby's independent United Shore Professional Baseball League."

The article called the result "a textbook example of innovation in sports architecture."

What made it novel

The luxury suites sit at field level directly behind home plate rather than high above it, and connect back to the concourse through a full service bar. More suites are built cabana style on top of the dugouts. Every one of the 2,000 fixed seats in the bowl is between the dugouts, with group areas and outfield berms carrying the rest of the 4,500 capacity.

The economics were the harder problem. The site was a former town dump, and $3 million of the $15 million build cost went to remediating the land before anything could go on it. "We built on a landfill," Appleby told Sports Weekly. "Yes, we turned the town dump into Disney World."

One ballpark hosts all three clubs in the United Shore Professional Baseball League, so the building has to earn its return on a calendar no single-tenant park can match. That is the kind of problem pro forma based design exists to solve.

The facts

Teams: all three clubs of the independent United Shore Professional Baseball League. Location: 7171 Auburn Road, Utica, Michigan 48317. Architect: Pendulum. Cost to build: $15 million. Capacity: 4,500. First game: May 30, 2016, a 5 to 1 Unicorns win over the Beavers.

Source: Joe Mock, "Fun year to judge ballparks," USA TODAY Sports Weekly, August 10 to 16, 2016, pages 10 and 11. Mock operates BaseballParks.com, an affiliate of USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties.

Jimmy John's Field is one of the projects behind Pendulum's S.C.O.R.E. approach to pro forma based design. See the Jimmy John's Field project page.