Werner Park

If you plopped Werner Park down anywhere in Arizona it would fit right in as a Cactus League ballpark. But instead it stands in the cornfields of Papillion, a suburb of Omaha, where in 2011 it partially replaced the iconic stadium that had been the only home the Triple-A affiliate of the Royals had ever known. Rosenblatt Stadium held 23,145, which made it much too big for the Omaha Royals, but a capacity that was needed for the College World Series. Rather than share a slightly larger and $131 million ballpark built in downtown Omaha for the CWS, the O-Royals moved 16.4 miles southwest into a roughly $30 million ballpark that can hold a mere 9,023 and changed their name to Storm Chasers to celebrate the change in location.

While I don't really like the new team name, their new ballpark is everything you could hope for these days and has at least one thing in common with the 'Blatt: multi-colored seats. The best seats in Werner Park are all shaded blue, the majority are green and the first two rows in every section are maroon. While having three colors of seats is a departure from the modern single-colored norm, Rosenblatt too had three hues of seats (blue, yellow & red).

Comparisons between past and present Omaha area ballparks end there, but Werner Park definitely feels like one of the newer Arizona spring training ballparks, which is a good thing as they are a fabulous lot. It bears the most semblance to Goodyear, but is a more good version of where the Indians and Reds train. With uncut prairie grass in abundance beyond the concourse in right field and featured as part of the landscaping with rocks and small trees elsewhere on the wide walkway, the American Southwest vibe is in evidence along the wrap around concourse. But native Nebraska limestone is used often enough to give the place a Heartland feel too. You'll find limestone chunks, which serve as benches, on the concourse and outside the ballpark while the two-story suite structures, which resemble office buildings, are most prominently made of limestone and glass. Wood paneling used for the bathroom entrances would also seem out of place out West.

Placed in the left field corner is what feels like the happiest place in Nebraska, as a carousel anchors what is an enormous (and enormously popular) play area for the pre-teen set. Notable additions beyond the bending outfield fence include a basketball court, wiffle ball field, a full-service bar beneath the scoreboard, stacked bullpens next to the batter's backdrop, and amphitheatre-style limestone benches in right field. The outfield is home to a big berm while the grandstand can hold 6,434.

I had the pleasure to visit Werner Park for the first time in its first year. This is a ballpark done right and it will be interesting to come back in later years to see how well it has served as a catalyst for development. Right now, there's cornfields and traffic circles in the vicinity and that's pretty much it. So while a fine job was done creatively filling in the ballpark's confines, much has to be done to convert the serene surroundings into a baseball boom town. Until then, Werner Park will be a spring training level major league caliber ballpark in a Field of Dreams setting.

Location

Better known, and generally touted, as being in Sarpy County, Werner Park is situated in former farmland near Highway 370 in an unincorporated part of the county, with plans for the land to one day be annexed into the nearby county seat city of Papillion, which is the city of record for the ballpark's official address. An even 19 miles northeast from 12356 Ballpark Way in Papillion is TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, which opened the same year as Werner Park to primarily serve as the home of the College World Series each June. While the downtown Omaha ballpark is surrounded by all the big city stuff you'd expect, Sarpy County's stadium looks out upon land upon which corn is still grown, with soybean fields and prairie grass a very common sight on the site for which the master plan is to build homes, hotels, restaurants, etc. The etcetera even includes plans for an indoor ice rink to be included in the area that will be known as Pennant Place. Werner Park was the first planned piece to open in Pennant Place and will serve as the anchor for all that is to come.

Getting There  [map it]
Werner Park is just under 3 miles from I-80 and is easy to get to from the Interstate. Just take exit #439 then travel east on Highway 370. After 2.6 miles, turn left onto 126th Street and you'll see the ballpark ahead on the right. The actual distance from I-80 to the ballpark's parking lot entrance is 2.8 miles and good signage along the way ensures that Werner Park is easy to find.

Parking

Parking is plentiful and free, cheap or modestly priced depending on where you park. As would be expected, free parking is furthest from the ballpark, and it's in unpaved lots behind left field. To park for free, just bypass the paid and paved parking lot entrances off of 126th Street and turn right on Lincoln Road. From that road you enter the gravel lots on your right. Space there isn't guaranteed however, as they'll be gone 20 minutes or so before game time on good crowd days (an attendance of more than 6,500). The biggest amount of available parking is classified as general. General parking is just $2 and it makes up the majority of the big parking lots that span the ballpark's left side. Parking lot gates 2 & 4 are the designated entrances for general parking. Gate 3 is the entrance for VIP parking, a $5 option that will put you as close as you can possibly park to Werner Park's main entrance gate and box office, which are both behind home plate.

Limestone -- lots of it -- all mined in Nebraska is found throughout the ballpark, which has multi-colored seats in its grandstand. The green, blue and maroon seats (left) are quite the color contrast from the golden-hued limestone, which was most notably used to build the two-story suite structures (right) that are along the first and third baselines.

Features

The playing field has a classic look in the infield, thanks to a simple dirt strip, and a quirky one in the outfield, where the wall curves inward in right field and is angular in left field. While the concave and jagged outfield fence is a noticeably contrived design seen fairly frequently in today's modern retro-styled ballparks, the dirt path between the pitcher's mound and home plate is something that was commonplace long ago but is rarely seen in ballparks nowadays.

A 24-foot tall carousel purchased from Universal Studios in Orlando, FL is the featured attraction in the pay-to-play family fun zone that's found on the left field corner concourse. Designed to entertain children aged 3-12, the 6,500-square-foot activity-filled fun zone also has tent-covered permanent playground equipment and numerous inflatables, which are deflated after each game.

Left-center field is home to a few of the ballpark's most notable amenities. It's where, from left to right, a bar, basketball court, and whiffleball field can be found. The Downdraught Bar is beneath the ballpark's scoreboard and serves beer, liquor and wine selections. Next to it is a basketball court, which is less than half-court in size. To its right is a much bigger whiffleball field, where the bases in the all-dirt infield are 45 feet apart and right field is very much downhill from home plate.

Warren Buffett, one of the world's richest men, was a minority owner of his hometown baseball team from 1991 until 2012 and is the inspiration for the Buffett Boardroom, a quite visible meeting room that looks out on the third base concourse. The glass-walled boardroom is just that -- a simple boardroom that contains a table with office chairs around it. The Buffett Boardroom has a capacity of 20 people but it's not accessible to the public. Instead, it's set aside for exclusive use by the Storm Chasers front office. The ballpark's boardroom is 18 miles from Omaha's Kiewit Plaza, the location of the headquarters of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the holding company that made Buffett a multi-billionaire.

The bullpens are stacked alongside the right side of the batter's backdrop. Omaha's bullpen is elevated above the visitors', which is at field level. Simple chain-link fencing is all the separates the berm from the bullpens, so they are quite fan-friendly when it comes to accessibility.

Flames burst from mini cauldrons on both sides of the batter's backdrop in center field whenever the Storm Chasers win a game or hit a home run. The fiery display from the "Batter’s Eye Flames" also occurs at the start of the game.

An interesting sight to see after the game is the procession of players from both teams heading to left field, where a ramp near the foul pole leads from the playing field to the clubhouses, which are behind the concourse in left field. Fans can stand on a metallic bridge there as the players pass underneath.

The Home Run Porch overlooks the action in left field, where the fence zigs and zags at odd angles. The fence is irregular in right field too, but it curves inward there. Berm seating is behind the outfield wall on each side, except for where the bleacher-filled Home Run Porch is.

Ballpark History

That the Omaha Storm Chasers don’t actually play in Omaha has everything to do with a decision by that city in 2008, when plans to build a replacement for Rosenblatt Stadium were announced to satisfy the NCAA.

Rosenblatt Stadium (est. 1948) had been home to the College World Series since 1950 and the Kansas City Royals’ Triple-A team since 1969, but a combination of a bunch of things, age included, meant a new ballpark was needed to keep the CWS in Omaha long-term.

Keeping the then named Omaha Royals in Nebraska’s largest city was a hoped for byproduct of the new ballpark plan announced on February 27, 2008, but what came to be called TD Ameritrade Park wasn’t designed to be the intimate, family-friendly minor league ballpark that the O-Royals wanted. It did, however, secure the rights to host the CWS for another 25 years, which was Omaha's primary goal.

So instead of playing second fiddle in a 24,000-seat stadium in downtown Omaha, the Royals set their sights on getting a smaller ballpark in the Omaha suburbs, where one could be built to suit for the team. Sarpy County formally came into play after a chance encounter at the Memphis airport in December 2007 between the Royals’ president, Alan Stein, and a county administrator named Mark Wayne. The two got to talking in Tennessee and a year later a Memorandum of Understanding would be signed between the two parties that the men represented to build a baseball stadium that would "serve as the anchor of an attractive, vibrant multiple-use family entertainment destination.''

The MOU was announced on December 3, 2008, a contract guaranteeing the ballpark would be built by the county and used by the Triple-A team was signed on March 17, 2009, and on June 1, 2009 the site for the ballpark was chosen.

Schewe Farms was the site in Sarpy County that was chosen, and as its name suggests it was the most rural of the three finalists. The two runner-up locations were in Bellevue and LaVista. They lost out to a 300-acre parcel of farmland where corn stalks and soybean plants have been replaced by Pennant Place, a still in the process of being built live, work and play community that features Werner Park and its parking lots, which collectively occupy 31 acres in the southwestern portion of the site that is just west of Papillion city limits.

Werner Park was the first thing to open in Pennant Place, the multiple-use family entertainment destination envisioned by the MOU, when on April 8, 2011 a game between two local high school teams actually christened the ballpark. The Papillion-LaVista South Titans beat the Papillion-LaVista Monarchs, 2-0, before an estimated 2,500 fans.

The following weekend, the Omaha Storm Chasers, renamed as such on November 15, 2010, officially began play in their new home, although their inaugural home game, scheduled for April 15, was postponed due to weather, which seemed somewhat apropos given the team’s new name.

And so, despite what the ballpark’s dedication plaque reads, April 16, 2011, and not the April 15th date that is etched into bronze, ended up being the official Opening Day for Werner Park.