Plans to install a cigar bar at PNC Park next season have some season ticket holders fuming because they say they'll be crowded out of a favorite haunt by the oncoming cloud.

Pirates management yesterday acknowledged that the Montecristo Club, a cigar and martini bar, "is definitely in the mix" for changes on the club level, where first-year season ticket holders paid $2,000 each for seat licenses.

"They're trying to do things that are nice, and have unique things at the stadium, like they do all over the country," said Joey DiSalvo, the Westmoreland County restaurateur who helped put together the deal between the Pirates and Altadis, the Florida-based cigar maker. Mr. DiSalvo, who operates an upscale restaurant in Latrobe, said he'll supply the cigars for the venture.

"Nice," though, might be in the eyes of the beholder and, in this case, some ticket holders don't want smoke in theirs.

"I'm just outraged, basically. And nobody from the Pirates organization seems able to tell us how this came to be," said Jennifer Kirsch, a season ticket holder who said she attends 42 games a year, 95 percent of them spent dining and watching in Gunner's Lounge, the expected site of the cigar bar.

"I don't want to breathe it," Ms. Kirsch said. She said the club level already overcrowds on sellouts and promotional days and that turning one-third of the area into a smoking bar will drive out nonsmoking fans.

Club spokeswoman Patty Paytas said yesterday plans for the Montecristo Club are in the final stages.

"We'll communicate with our season ticket holders in the very near future about all the different things that are coming," she said.

She said the cigar-smoking section would represent less than 9 percent of the seating area in the club level section.

One Wilkins couple, Louis and Marcia Swartz, said they had already heard from a club ticket representative about the changes. Mrs. Swartz said she first learned of the plans in her role as a volunteer tour guide at PNC Park.

Her season ticket representative, Mike Thompson, responded with details about the bar: "It will be a self-contained area with seating in sections 207-208. The club itself will have the smoking areas inside only and [smoke] will be filtered out of the building so as not to affect the surrounding seating areas in the ballpark."

The Swartzes and several other families insist they'll be affected because they will lose the use of one of the three clubs.

"We contracted for full use of the club level and now, unless we're cigar smokers, we will have two," Mrs. Swartz said.

PNC Park experimented last season with a half-dozen cigar nights, setting aside an area for aficionados to light up and lose themselves in a cloud of pleasure.

"It was kind of a test of whether or not it was a viable opportunity to draw additional customers to PNC Park," said Laurie Silverman of CX2, a New Castle distributor of premium cigars. Mrs. Silverman helped organize the events, which she said attracted no complaints.

"There's a huge consumer interest in having this type of venue done," she said. Comerica Park in Detroit and Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, Fla., currently have cigar bars.

Ms. Paytas said the Montecristo Club would not mark a departure from the park's no-smoking policy inside the outdoor seating area.

"We're definitely not going out there and promoting smoking, especially not promoting smoking to youth," she said. "This provides another designated area."

To Dow Malnati, who retired to the Pittsburgh area from Rochester, N.Y., seven years ago so she could attend Pirates games, the arrival of the Montecristo Club means she'll probably abandon the park.

"I'll be angry and I probably will not renew my season tickets beyond the All-Star Game," Mrs. Malnati said.

Throughout November, e-mails have flown among ticket holders expressing doubts about the cigar bar. One, released yesterday by Mrs. Swartz, came from a fan who complained of secrecy and likened it to this past summer's pay raise by the Pennsylvania General Assembly, and asked what the Pirates' most visible anti-smoking campaigner, shortstop Jack Wilson, would think.

Mr. Wilson, reached at his home yesterday, said he's not about to be seen in the Montecristo Club, but "I really don't have an opinion on it. If the organization feels they've got to have those in place at the stadium, that's their thing.

"I just go there to work."