The Triple-A Int’l League Charlotte Knights christened BB&T Ballpark last weekend, attracting three sellout crowds and introducing a new generation of fans to baseball in uptown Charlotte. The Knights, a White Sox affiliate, moved back to the city in a new 10,200-capacity ballpark after spending the past 25 years playing ball in Fort Mill, S.C. The move back to Charlotte’s urban core has resonated with fans. Ovations Food Services, the Knights’ concessionaire, reported a food and drink per cap of $21.50 for the team’s April 11 home opener, a record for a vendor among its 17 Minor League Baseball accounts. Sales were anchored by a strong craft brew selection, including NoDa Brewing Co. and Olde Mecklenburg Brewery, two Charlotte microbreweries, as well as regional brewers Foothills and Natty Greene’s, said Ovations President Ken Young. For the three-game set, the average spend was about $15. Concessions per caps at a typical Triple-A game are $12.50-14, and Young expects the Knights’ new park to fall back in that range over the course of the season. There were a few glitches on opening weekend, including technical difficulties tied to the Toshiba-produced video board in left-center field which prevented the Knights from consistently displaying the line score and showing replays. The video board last night froze for several minutes, prompting Twitter comments from fans attending the game. “We’re still working through all the video board technology and what it can do,” Knights COO Dan Rajkowski said during Saturday night’s game. “We also had glitches with the point-of-sale system. It got overloaded. It’s all on an iPad, which is a great system, it’s just a matter of getting them all to work together.”
SQUEEZING MORE FANS IN: After seeing crowd flow over the first three home games, Rajkowski believes the Knights can sell more standing-room only tickets to the Carolinas HealthCare System Home Run Porch in right field. The team initially capped ticket sales at 300 in that space. “Those functioned pretty well,” he said. “It’s energized up there. A lot of people are watching the game but it’s also very social.” Observers noticed pinch points on a narrow concourse down the third base line, a space lined with portable concession carts. It is a function of site constraints, but the Knights feel that once fans get to know their way around the park, some of that congestion will be eliminated, said ballpark architects Martin DiNitto and Mike Woollen. The same should hold true for restrooms. Some facilities had long lines but bathrooms behind home plate were empty, they said.
CATALYST FOR MORE DEVELOPMENT: The ballpark should serve as a linchpin for further development in uptown Charlotte, project officials said. A proposed hotel and a separate office building beyond left field are targeted to break ground later this year. At this point, the Knights are using that space to sell more standing-room only tickets. DiNitto said other developments include apartments and condominiums proposed for Graham Street near the park’s third base gate. “The stadium has definitely been a catalyst to revitalize this part of downtown,” DiNitto said. “As soon as we started construction, a 22-story apartment building went up across the street facing Romare Bearden Park.” The city park, which opened last summer, runs parallel to the stadium along the right-field wall. On opening night, several people who could not get tickets to the opener watched the game from the park on a video screen attached to the stadium’s exterior. Others stood along a sidewalk and peered at the action through iron gates. “When we’re sold, that’s fine,” Rajkowski said. “I think they will eventually say, ‘Hey, let’s get inside the park and check it out.”
