is a

baseball stadium A ballpark, or baseball park, is a type of sports venue where baseball is played. The playing field is divided into two field sections called the infield and the outfield. The infield is an area whose dimensions are rigidly defined in part ba ...

located in

Kitahiroshima, Hokkaido is a city located in Ishikari, Hokkaido, Japan. The city's name has a literal meaning of "North Hiroshima City". As of July 31, 2023, the city had an estimated population of 57,019, with 27,221 households, and a density of 479 persons per km� ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. The ballpark is owned by and operated by Nippon Ham, which has used it as the home field for the

Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters The are a Japanese professional Baseball in Japan, baseball team based in Kitahiroshima, Hokkaido, Kitahiroshima, Hokkaidō, in the Sapporo metropolitan area. They compete in the Pacific League of Nippon Professional Baseball, playing the major ...

Nippon Professional Baseball is a professional baseball league and the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning simply ''Professional Baseball''; outside of Japan, NPB is often referred to as "Japanese baseball". The roots of the league ...

(NPB) since its opening in 2023. Designed by

Obayashi Corporation is one of five major Japanese construction companies along with Shimizu Corporation, Takenaka Corporation, Kajima Corporation, and Taisei Corporation. It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is one of the Nikkei 225 corporations. Its h ...

and

HKS Architects HKS, Inc. is an American international architecture firm headquartered in Dallas, Texas (US). History The firm was founded in 1939 by Harwood K. Smith. In 2002, HKS expanded its international presence by opening HKS Arquitectos in Mexi ...

, the stadium has capacity for 35,000 people. It is Japan's second

retractable roof A retractable roof is a roof system designed to roll back the roof of a structure so that the interior of the facility is open to the outdoors. Retractable roofs are sometimes referred to as operable roofs or retractable skylights. The term o ...

facility and its asymmetrical playing surface is only the third natural turf field in NPB. The area immediately surrounding the stadium is being developed into Hokkaido Ballpark F Village, an entertainment district that holds commercial facilities and restaurants. The first game was held on March 30, 2023, between the Nippon-Ham Fighters and the

Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles The , often shortened as the , are a baseball team based in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. It has played in Nippon Professional Baseball's Pacific League since the team's formation in November 2004. The team is owned by the Internet shopping ...

, with former Nippon Ham Fighters managers

Hideki Kuriyama is a Japanese former baseball manager and player. He managed the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters of Nippon Professional Baseball for ten seasons from 2012 to 2021, leading them to a Japan Series title in 2016. Kuriyama also managed for the Samurai ...

Masataka Nashida Masataka Nashida (Japanese:梨田昌孝, born August 4, 1953, in Hamada, Shimane, Japan) is a former Nippon Professional Baseball catcher and manager. As a player, he played for the Kintetsu Buffaloes from 1972 to 1988. After playing, he went on ...

and Trey Hillman throwing out the first pitch to celebrate the opening of the stadium.

History

Background

In early 2016, the

, a

(NPB) team, began considering constructing a new stadium in or around

Sapporo is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in Hokkaido, Japan. Located in the southwest of Hokkaido, it lies within the alluvial fan of the Toyohira River, a tributary of the Ishikari River. Sapporo is the capital ...

. Since first relocating to Sapporo from

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

in 2004, the Fighters played their home games in

Sapporo Dome The , currently known as for sponsorship reasons, is a stadium located in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan, and is primarily used for association football. It is the home field of the association football club Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo, and was also h ...

, a

multi-purpose stadium A multi-purpose stadium is a type of stadium designed to be easily used for multiple types of events. While any stadium could potentially host more than one type of sport or event, this concept usually refers to a design philosophy that stres ...

. Instead of being owned and operated by the team, the facility was owned by the city of Sapporo and operated and managed by Sapporo Dome Co., Ltd., a

voluntary sector In relation to public services, the voluntary sector is the realm of social activity undertaken by non-governmental, not for profit organizations. This sector is also called the third sector (in contrast to the public sector and the private sec ...

company funded by the city and its community. At the time, the dome was charging the Fighters approximately ¥16 million (about $108,000) per game to play at the facility in front of a capacity crowd; annually, the team was spending around ¥1.3 billion (about $8.8 million) to play there. Additionally, Nippon Ham did not make any money on concessions or advertising in the stadium during their games. The high rental fees, loss of in-stadium sales revenue, and inflexibility of a multi-purpose facility all contributed to Nippon Ham's decision to explore building their own stadium. The team considered 15 to 20 sites in Hokkaido as candidates to build their new ballpark, including the campus of

Hokkaido University , or , is a public research university in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. Founded in 1918, it is the fifth-oldest government-authorised university in Japan and one of the former Imperial Universities. The university finds its roots in Sapporo A ...

Kita-ku, Sapporo is a ward of Sapporo composed of residential neighborhoods mostly arranged in grid patterns, and each built surrounding a train station, broken up by areas of farmland and some light-industrial areas. With 260,000 people, it is the most populat ...

, the Makomanai district in

Minami-ku, Sapporo is one of the 10 wards in Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan. Minami-ku is directly translated as "south ward". Having the area of 657.48 km2 in total, Minami-ku occupies 60 percent of the area of Sapporo. Overview According to the jūminhyō (reg ...

, and the planned "Kitahiroshima Sports Park" site in Kitahiroshima, a suburb of Sapporo. Makomanai Park

NPB set up a task force in collaboration with Nippon Ham in December 2016 to advance the new stadium project and develop a firm plan by March 2018. The mayor of Kitahiroshima met team representatives to propose its sports park concept. It offered up 20 of the 36 hectares at its "Kitahiroshima Sports Park" site for a natural grass,

baseball stadium capable of seating 30,000 people. Additionally, the site could be home to an indoor practice field, training facilities, and commercial space. Initially, Sapporo appealed to the team to continue playing at Sapporo Dome, even offering to make the facility a baseball-only stadium. After Nippon Ham continued to pursue new construction and with Kitahiroshima quickly offering up a plan, however, the city looked for suitable sites for a new stadium to avoid the prospect of the team leaving. Four months later, Sapporo offered up two locations: 10 hectares at Hokkaido University and 13 hectares Toyohira-ku; both sites, however, were quickly deemed unusable due to various circumstances. With the Kitahiroshima negotiations progressing, Sapporo offered a third site by the end of 2017— Makomanai Park. The city proposed redevelopeding 20 hectares of the park into a baseball campus that included restaurants and commercial facilities with the new stadium being built in place of the park's aging

Makomanai Open Stadium The Makomanai Sekisui Heim Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in Sapporo, Japan. During the 1972 Winter Olympics, it hosted the opening ceremonies and the speed skating events. Concerns regarding the conservation of Makomanai Park's natural environment and opposition from local residents played a part in the decision not to redevelop the area. Furthermore, Kitahiroshima's larger, 36-hectares location provided more space to construct the stadium and its planned surrounding facilities. The city also agreed pay for the cost of infrastructure development, lease the land to Nippon Ham free of charge, and exempt the ballpark and other park facilities from property tax and city planning tax for 10 years.

Development and construction

The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...

's (MLB) Texas Rangers announced a partnership agreement in early 2018. At the time, the Rangers were constructing a new ballpark,

Globe Life Field Globe Life Field is a retractable roof stadium in Arlington, Texas, United States. It is the home ballpark of Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers (baseball), Texas Rangers. It is located just south of the Rangers' former home ballpark, Globe ...

, and they advised the Fighters on their plans to build their new stadium in Hokkaido. Nippon Ham revealed the basic stadium design and further details later that year. Owned and operated by Nippon Ham, the ballpark was designed by Obayashi and architecture firm HKS, the architect of Globe Life Field, and its construction was estimated to cost ¥60 billion ($530 million in 2018). In January 2020, real estate company ES-Con Japan acquired the naming rights to the stadium. A ground breaking ceremony for the stadium was held on April 13, 2020, and construction started on May 1. The stands and roof were built concurrently to speed up the construction schedule; the roof sections were assembled and installed on the stadium later from the outside. Workers had to contend with heavy snowfall during the winter months. A total of 650,000 people worked on the project up until its completion on January 4, 2023; a completion ceremony was held the following day. The stadium's immediate economic effect on Hokkaido is estimated to be about ¥163.4 billion, with it totaling about ¥678.8 billion over the next ten years. With the stadium planned to be operational for the 2023 NPB season, the Fighters hoped to host

opening day Opening Day is the day on which professional baseball leagues begin their regular season. For Major League Baseball (MLB) and most of the American minor leagues, this day typically falls during the first week of April, although in recent year ...

at their new facility. The team scheduled to hold the opening day game that year, the

, agreed to transfer the game to Nippon Ham after a year of negotiations. The ballpark's first game was a preseason match on March 14, 2023; its first official game was held on March 30.

Design and features

When designing the Es Con Field, Fighters executives saw a trend internationally that combined sports venues with other forms of entertainment to increase their overall social impact. With population declining and entertainment diversifying, their goal was for their new facility to provide forms of entertainment that would attract more people than just baseball fans. They hoped to create a new kind of ballpark concept in Japan by combining a stadium with Hokkaido's tourism, food and nature. Most baseball stadiums in NPB are similar in design to MLB parks of the 1980s and 90s that tended acutely separate the inside of a stadium from its outside environment. While MLB stadium designs continued to evolve, NPB designs stagnated and Nippon Ham hoped that Es Con Field would help to start that same evolution. The stadium's unconventional exterior design is the result of an attempt to combine practicality with something that would be familiar to the people of Hokkaido. Its large, brown, triangular roof was inspired by local barns and ''banya'', large lodging facilities for fishermen, and its high peak is meant to be reminiscent of a traditional Hokkaido home. The retractable roof, only the second in Japan other than Fukuoka PayPay Dome, and the -high glass wall on the outfield-side of the stadium allow light in to help to support the natural grass. The -wide movable roof is one of the largest in the world and was specifically designed to withstand the weight of snow and extreme temperature differences. The 10,000 ton roof moves about eight centimeters per second and can open or close in 25 minutes. Three tiers of stands allow the stadium to accommodate 35,000 people. Instead of one main scoreboard, the stadium features two LED screens along the first and third baselines. A five-story building dubbed "Tower 11" for the number that both

Yu Darvish , more commonly known as Yu Darvish (ダルビッシュ有), is a Japanese professional baseball pitcher for the San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball (MLB). He has previously played in MLB for the Texas Rangers (baseball), Texas Rangers, Lo ...

and

Shohei Ohtani is a Japanese professional baseball designated hitter and pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball (MLB). Nicknamed "Shotime", he has previously played in MLB for the Los Angeles Angels and in Nippon Professional Basebal ...

wore during their tenures with the Fighters stands beyond the leftfield stands. The facility includes seating, a bar, an ''

onsen In Japan, are hot springs and the bathing facilities and Ryokan (inn), traditional inns around them. There are approximately 25,000 hot spring sources throughout Japan, and approximately 3,000 ''onsen'' establishments use naturally hot water ...

'' hot spring sauna from which you can look out onto the field, and a hotel open year-round including on non-game days. While the Eagles'

Rakuten Seimei Park Miyagi , officially Miyagi Baseball Stadium, is a baseball stadium in Miyaginohara Sports Park in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. The 30,508-seat park is owned by the prefecture and operated by Rakuten, which has used it as the home field for the Tohok ...

Sendai is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Miyagi Prefecture and the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,098,335 in 539,698 households, making it the List of cities in Japan, twelfth most populated city in Japan. ...

features lodging accommodations onsite, Es Con Field's hotel is the first ballpark in Japan to have rooms that overlook the field, similar to the

Rogers Centre Rogers Centre (originally SkyDome) is a retractable roof stadium in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated at the base of the CN Tower near the northern shore of Lake Ontario. Opened in 1989 on the former Railway Lands, it is home to t ...

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. It has twelve rooms capable of accommodating a total of 54 people Behind the center and rightfield stands are a brewpub and a children's playground, respectively.

Field

The ballpark's playing surface, consisting of natural

Kentucky bluegrass ''Poa pratensis'', commonly known as Kentucky bluegrass (or blue grass), smooth meadow-grass, or common meadow-grass, is a perennial species of grass native to practically all of Europe, North Asia and the mountains of Algeria, Morocco, and Tuni ...

, was excavated and lies below ground level. The field is asymmetrical unlike most other NPB ballparks was an important starting design point for the stadium, according to Ken Maesawa, director and general manager of Fighters Sports & Entertainment. Along with Mazda Stadium, Es Con Field is only the second current NPB field to feature an asymmetrical outfield wall.; the distances from home plate to the outfield walls are to the left foul pole, to the right, and to the center field wall. Teams'

bullpen In baseball, the bullpen (or simply the pen) is the area where relief pitchers warm up before entering a game. A team's roster of relief pitchers is also metonymically referred to as "the bullpen". These pitchers usually wait in the bullpen if ...

s lie just beyond and adjacent to the outfield wall, allowing fans to watch pitchers warming up, a first for an NPB stadium. The Fighters' previous stadium, Sapporo Dome, had approximately twice as much foul territory as other NPB stadiums. Es Con Field's foul territory was designed to be 15% smaller than Sapporo Dome's to bring fans closer to the field of play. The distance from home plate to the backstop is . During the stadium's final stages of construction, however, it was revealed that this distance did not comply with a rule that requires the distance to be a minimum of . After an NPB executive meeting, it was decided that games would be played there for the 2023 season on the condition that foul territory be expanded in the offseason.

F Village

On January 1, 2023, the city of Kitahiroshima officially changed name of the approximately 32-hectare area surrounding the new stadium from Kyoei to F Village. Unlike in Japan, it is common for MLB teams to build dining, entertainment, commercial districts around their stadiums. The Fighters looked to these examples in the United States to draw inspiration for their own district.

Truist Park Truist Park is a baseball stadium in the Atlanta metropolitan area, approximately 10 miles (16 km) northwest of downtown Atlanta in the unincorporated community of Cumberland, in Cobb County, Georgia. Opened in 2017, it is the ballpark of ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

served as a reference develop a complex of commercial and residential facilities to create a sports community around the stadium. The concept of dividing the district into areas for casual and serious baseball fans was inspired by

Busch Stadium Busch Stadium (also referred to informally as "New Busch Stadium" or "Busch Stadium III") is a baseball stadium located in St. Louis, Missouri. It is the home of Major League Baseball's St. Louis Cardinals. It has a seating capacity of 44,383, ...

's St. Louis Ballpark Village in

St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...

. Outside the park, in F Village, there would be a farm area, which would be an agricultural area using state-of-the-art agricultural technologies from Kubota.

would be a technical exhibition partner. ES-CON Japan, aside from getting the naming rights, would also build a luxury apartment named "Le Jade Hokkaido Ball Park", which would be 2 14-story high rise residences. Residents will also be given a free 10 year annual pass to the stadium. A miniature version of the ballpark would be built outside in F Village. It would be built because they hope that "a future Fighter" would born from the children that would play at the miniature park. It was announced that by 2024, there will be a senior home in the southeast corner, alongside a medical mall. Also, by April 2023, a new child care support center would be opened next to the farm area.

Access

Kita-Hiroshima Station on

Hokkaido Railway Company The is one of the constituent companies of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group), and is often referred to by its official abbreviation: . It operates intercity and local rail services in Hokkaido, Japan. The company introduced Kitaca, a smart ...

Chitose Line The is a railway line in Hokkaido operated by Hokkaido Railway Company (JR Hokkaido), connecting Numanohata Station, Numanohata, Tomakomai, Hokkaido, Tomakomai and Shiroishi Station (JR Hokkaido), Shiroishi Station in Shiroishi-ku, Sapporo, link ...

is currently the closest train station to the stadium. In anticipation of the opening of Es Con Field in 2023, the west exit of the station is being expanded and a shuttle bus terminal is being added to provide access directly to the stadium from the station. With the walk from Kita-Hiroshima Station to the stadium being approximately 20 minutes, a tentative plan to build a new station closer to ballpark with bridge directly connecting the two was announced in 2019. The earliest it could open, however, would be 2027, five years after the anticipated opening of Es Con Field. The Fighters’ stadium is also expected to have parking for 3,000 to 4,000 vehicles, unusual for ballparks in Japan which generally rely solely on public transportation.

References

External links

* {{Portal bar, Asia, Japan, Baseball, Architecture Sports venues in Hokkaido Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters HKS, Inc. buildings Nippon Professional Baseball venues Retractable-roof stadiums in Japan Sports venues completed in 2023 2023 establishments in Japan