Allianz Field

ALL I ANZ F I ELD BVM: Can you talk a little about how you manage to keep the grass in good shape in your, admittedly, less than advantageous climate? Borrell: “We have a glycol heating system with 27 miles worth of tubing under the field; we can control the temperature of the soil; we have a sub-air system which aids in the drying out and the efficiency of the field from a moisture standpoint. And then we have grass that was grown in Colorado on plastic, trying to avoid any danger of cutting the root when harvested. When grown on plastic, the roots grow out instead of down and adhere quicker when transplanted. On top of that, we have grow lights, which basically is manufactured sunlight, in areas that require more light. With the canopy that we have, there’s significant shade that’s projected onto the field. So, ensuring that the field gets a healthy dose of sunlight, we made a capital investment in grow lights.” BVM: Does the stadium have any green or sustainable practices or programs? Borrell: “First and foremost, we kicked off our 2019 season with a three-bag system, including compost, recycling, and trash, to make sure we’re doing our part from a waste perspective. We’ve had about 48 percent diversion as of last month, which is a really good number for a brand new facility; typically, new facilities struggle to get somewhere around 30 percent. In addition to that, we have a rainwater re-use system that the city of St. Paul worked with us on. All the rain that’s collected by both the building and the surrounding area is collected in these tanks which can hold up to 700,000 gallons of water that gets re-used for some of our exterior irrigation systems, as opposed to drawing from city water resources. There are a couple of other amenities – 95 to 99 percent of our lights are LED, including our field lights to mitigate that impact on energy use, as well.” BVM: Who’s your biggest local competitor? Borrell: “From a sports standpoint, we’re still trying to figure out what our greatest competitor is in the market. We, obviously, coincide with Target Field and the Twins’ schedule, but we don’t typically see a huge drop in attendance when there’s a Twins game going on. Our biggest competitor, right now, has been the weather - trying to make sure that we have good weather on game days. But we have no control over that.” BVM: What else would you like our readers to know about Allianz Field? Borrell: “The biggest takeaway and one of the things that I’ve been most proud of in being part of this project is the fact that the entire building was done with the utmost thoughtfulness toward the fans. We don’t have a front office located here; we don’t have a lot of back-of-house space and that’s been done purposely. We wanted to make sure that most of this building was catering to the