Ballpark with a view

ST. LOUIS -- The first thing that strikes you as you walk into the new Busch Stadium is the view beyond the outfield walls.

Unlike the completely-enclosed old Busch, the new stadium features an open plaza in center, and the view is spectacular. In left-center, nestled among downtown hotels and office buildings sits the Old Courthouse where the Dred Scott slavery case was heard. In right-center, the Gateway Arch seems almost close enough to cast a shadow on the outfield spot where Jim Edmonds will patrol.

"We tried to achieve a balance between openness and intimacy," said Cardinals senior vice president for business development Bill DeWitt III, who led a media tour of the new ballpark on Friday. "The openness we achieved by keeping [the outfield] wide open."

The intimacy comes in part from the red-brick and steel ambiance both inside and out, and from a playing field 37 feet below ground level. The new stadium will eventually have a capacity of just under 47,000 (including standing-room tickets), making it a little smaller than the old ballpark.

Plenty of work remains with just a month and a day before the first game, an exhibition matchup of the Cardinals' two top minor-league teams. The first major league game is just a month and a week away, on April 10, when the Cardinals host the Milwaukee Brewers.

Construction crews are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. On Friday, they were doing everything from cutting carpet in luxury suites to laying steel to moving sand and dirt in preparation for field grass that is expected to arrive next week.

But even amid the noise and dust, the upgrade from the old stadium was evident. Old Busch, demolished soon after the Cardinals were beaten by Houston in the National League Championship Series, was a beloved place by Cardinals fans. But it was still a concrete relic of the mid-1960s, when stadiums were built to house both football and baseball.

The new Busch offers an experience even before you get to your seat. Those heading for seats in the nose-bleed sections emerge from the concourse into a massive and open area, where fans can stand and watch barges moving down the Mississippi River or view the Soulard neighborhood and its biggest attraction, the Anheuser-Busch brewery.

The urban setting is evident at some spots on the stadium's south side, where the noise of Interstate 64 -- where cars zoom by within 50 feet -- is a constant buzz. Manual scoreboards from the old Busch were placed in the concourse in part to block the view and noise of the highway, but some spots near the interstate were intentionally left open.

"We just kind of made it part of the experience," DeWitt said. "We wanted to take advantage of this urban setting, the excitement level."

The upper terrace level offers places for hundreds of standing-room-only tickets -- a good thing since only about 500,000 tickets remain for the season and they are expected to sell out Saturday when single-game tickets go on sale.

"In the old stadium we were almost embarrassed to sell standing-room tickets," DeWitt said, noting there were few places for those fans to see the game. "In the new stadium the standing-room tickets will actually be great tickets."

Some elements of the old Busch have been moved to the new ballpark. The Stan Musial statue, the before-game meeting place, will stand outside the main entrance at Spruce and Eighth streets. Steel archways at the top of the new stadium are in part a nod to the concrete archways that encircled the old Busch, and in part a nod to St. Louis' famed Eads Bridge over the Mississippi.