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Patriots' home field mourned by no one

Thursday, January 24, 2002

By Lillian Thomas, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

FOXBORO, Mass. -- Now that workers are starting to dismantle Foxboro Stadium in preparation for its spring demolition, people are beginning to reminisce.

	A worker at Foxboro Stadium yesterday carts off an aluminum bleacher seat that will be cut into mementoes for Patriots season-ticket holders. Only 7,000 of the 60,000 seats at Foxboro had backs. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

"It's a dump. There's no room," said Russ Charpentier, a reporter for the Cape Cod Times in the old stadium's press working room yesterday.

"It's been nothing but a horror," said Don Lowery, vice president of community relations for the New England Patriots.

"We did a survey and found that on average it took 17 minutes to get through the bathroom during a game. So if you went at the beginning of halftime, you'd miss the beginning of the second half. It was about the same for the concession stands."

In 1997, when New England hosted the AFC Championship Game, more than 350 reporters tried to report out of a press box with a supposed capacity of 120.

"We had to bring in two trailers and a tent for the media," said Lowery.

"I was writing in the opposing team locker room," said Charpentier.

Built for $6.5 million in 1971, the stadium was inadequate from the get-go. People remember that the toilets overflowed during the first game there.

"Yes, it happened, I was there. My shoes were soiled," said Mark Farinella, who was in high school at the time. He now reports for the Sun-Chronicle of Attleboro and has worked in the stadium's unfriendly confines for 25 years.

Set on a hill where the wind was whipping strongly enough to take an awning down on a news intern yesterday (he got out of it with six stitches), it looks like an overgrown high school stadium, with its two long sets of stands cobbled together by a single concourse and a small end zone set of bleachers. Most of the 60,000 seats are butt-chilling aluminum benches.

The players' locker room is a drop-ceiling, cramped room with open metal cage lockers. The concourse jams during games, and Route 1, the main access to the stadium, jams before and after. Crowds walking across the highway make it impossible for traffic to move.

"I remember a player bringing his wife here after he was drafted," said Lowery. "She said, 'So here's the practice field. Where's the stadium?' "

Lowery, who's been with the Patriots for eight years, can't wait to be done with the place.

"There is no sentimentality whatsoever," he said.

Well, maybe a little.

Jars of dirt from the stadium are offered on the Patriots Web site at $10.95 a pop. Workers are cutting up the goal posts for souvenirs as well as the aluminum bleachers, so that season ticket holders can buy their seats.

"But unlike Three Rivers, where you could rip the whole seat out, here you get a slab of aluminum," said Stacey James, who works in media relations for the Patriots. "Our seats you can hang on the wall. Yours you can use as a functional seat."

So the stadium does mean something to fans, mainly because of the football played there and because everyone remembers that it saved pro football in New England. The team played in several places during its first decade, and by the late 1960s, it was clear a franchise couldn't survive without its own stadium. The Patriots would have been moved had they not come up with a ball park.

Now it's being cleared of scoreboard, seats and other fixtures, said Lowery. Pointing to some trailer-ish looking structures, he said, "They're taking out those quote unquote luxury boxes over there."

When that is done in about two weeks, a pair of wrecking balls will go to work.

CMGi Field, the new stadium going up adjacent to the old just as Heinz Field did, is as state-of-the-art and no-holds-barred as the old one is bare-bones.

"The old stadium cost $6.5 million. The kitchen for the new stadium is going to cost $8.5 million," said Lowery.

The $325 million field is being built entirely with private money. Owner Robert Kraft already had the 325-acre parcel that both stadiums now occupy and is funding everything except $70 million in infrastructure costs, such as utility lines and road improvements, that will be publicly financed. CMGi, a Massachussetts Internet company, put up $120 million for the stadium naming rights.

The HOK-designed field has a silhouette that's somewhat similar to Heinz Field, also designed by the Kansas City firm.

It sits 40 feet lower than Foxboro Stadium, seats 68,000 and is packed with every amenity the old place lacked. Instead of ketchup bottles, it has a tower next to the scoreboard that looks like a New England lighthouse and an archway reminiscent of the landmark Longfellow Bridge in Boston.

It is scheduled for a soft opening in May, and will be used for soccer in the summer.

Not a single player, fan or Patriots employee could be found who expressed nostalgia for the old place.

A score in one contest between new and old fields has a fair amount of meaning to Patriots staff and fans:

Foxboro Stadium -- 20 restrooms, 167 portajohns

CMGi Field -- 44 restrooms, 0 portajohns.