NationalsPark

N ationals Park, home of Major League Baseball’s Washington Nationals, is a ten-year-old baseball stadium along the Anacostia River in the NavyYard neighborhood of Washington,D.C.The ballpark cost $693 million to build,with an additional $84.2 million spent on transportation, art, and infrastruc- ture upgrades.Of that amount, $611 million was financed by the District of Columbia as part of the deal that was structured to bring major league baseball back to the nation’s capital city in 2005.Opening Day in 2008 drew in 42,744 fans to watch the Washington Nationals defeat the Atlanta Braves 3 to 2. In addition to being the home of the National League’s Eastern division team, Nationals Park hosts other types of events, such as corporate meet- ings and concerts, and according to Jonathan Stahl,Vice President of Ballpark Operations, even weddings and bar mitzvahs.“If somebody can dream of it,we try to make it work in the ballpark,” he says.The park is also the first LEED-certified major profession- al sports stadium in the United States.The content of the building materials used contained a mini- mum of 10 percent recycled con- tent; its roof materials offer a high degree of reflectance,minimizing the amount of heat released to the environment; and water con- serving plumbing fixtures used throughout the stadium save an estimated 3.6 million NATIONALS PARK HOME OF THE WASHINGTON NATIONALS NATIONALS PARK