Stadium upgrades will make Fresno Grizzlies games look crisper, sound better than ever
Fresno Grizzlies games at Chukchansi Park this season promise to be a lot more vivid for the eyes and ears.
Downtown Fresno’s 20-year-old stadium (yes indeed; the first game was May 1, 2002) received a $2.3 million offseason makeover designed to enhance the audio and visual experience of every fan in attendance.
The most visible upgrade is a 2,000-square-foot video board illuminated by more than 2.1 million LEDs that takes up the entire space of the old scoreboard beyond left field.
Unfortunately, the new video board wasn’t immune to the realities of 2022. According to Grizzlies President Derek Franks, 30% of the panels and all the custom mounting brackets spent more than a month stuck in a container ship off the Port of Long Beach before finally arriving last week.
With Friday’s 6:50 p.m. season opener fast approaching, contractors and team staff worked to get the video board installed and fully operational in time.
“Things were kind of anxious for a while, but we feel like we got really lucky, all things considered,” Franks said.
The video board works in concert with eight new high-definition cameras situated throughout the stadium whose angles will also greatly improve the experience for those watching Grizzlies games on TV or via MiLB.com streaming. Two wireless “fan cams” will allow operations staff to project promotions and skits from any location onto the big screen.
Crisper video is accompanied by crisper sound. More than 125 speakers were installed throughout the 10,650-seat facility, giving operators the ability to broadcast different content (think music or Doug Greenwald’s play by play) to 27 separate “zones.”
Besides the new scoreboard and sound system, new LED stadium lights will brighten the field and reduce energy consumption. Most of the electricity used by Chukchansi Park is generated by solar panels installed above the parking lot across H Street.
Footing the bill are the Grizzlies and the city of Fresno. The $2.3 million came from a stadium improvement fund established after Fresno Sports and Events LLC purchased the minor-league baseball franchise in 2018.
The improvement fund started at $5.25 million, but $3.4 million of that was tapped in 2019 to create two new outfield social areas and remodel the club level.
There is just enough money remaining (roughly $1.5 million) to cover the projected costs of two necessary maintenance projects planned for the next offseason — a new playing surface and new exterior paint — according to Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias, who represents downtown.
To replenish the stadium fund, the Grizzlies and the city are both supposed to kick in $300,000 per year. Fresno’s $1 per ticket surcharge for all arts, park, entertainment and sports events (i.e. the APES fee) contributes about $200,000 annually.
However, after Grizzlies ownership lost in excess of $2 million as a result of the canceled 2020 season, the team’s payments were greatly reduced.
Grizzlies’ two tumultuous years
While the business of minor-league baseball always experiences ups and downs, the last two years rank among the most tumultuous in the club’s 26-year history.
After the pandemic forced all minor league teams to take a year-long sabbatical, the Grizzlies were singled out by MLB’s sweeping revamp of the minor leagues and unjustly demoted from the Triple-A Pacific Coast League to the Class-A California League.
(I am sometimes asked what it would take for the Grizzlies to go back to Triple-A. The most realistic answer: If/when Las Vegas gets a major league team.)
Home attendance last season plummeted compared to previous years, from 5,430 fans per game in 2019 to 2,928 in 2021. Still, it’s hard to say whether the dip was caused by pandemic-imposed restrictions and general wariness over public events, or the drop to Single A ball.
Franks, the club’s longtime executive and a minority owner, blames the pandemic. A belief, he said, that is supported by strong interest and group ticket sales.
“Things feel as close to normal as they have since the end of the 2019 season for baseball fans, and we’re seeing that,” Franks said.
Chukchansi Park may be 20 years old — fittingly, Fresno native Tom Goodwin scored the stadium’s first run in 2002 after legging out an infield single for the first hit — but the fan experience should be state of the art. Which these days counts for a lot.
This story was originally published April 8, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
