Populous, a globally-recognized sports architecture firm, has been chosen to lead the design team that will make hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of capital improvements to Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
The Maryland Stadium Authority voted on Tuesday to approve the selection of the Kansas City-based sports design firm to be the lead architect for approximately $400 million worth of upgrades that the state agreed to fund at the 32-year-old ballpark if the Orioles signed a 15-year lease, which they did last year.
Populous’s associate architect will be Adams Design Group of Baltimore, a minority business enterprise founded by Derrick Adams, who attended the meeting.
The stadium authority also approved a team called the Gilbane-WarrenBuilds Joint Venture to serve as construction manager for the Oriole Park improvements. That contract still must be approved by the state’s Board of Public Works on July 17 before it becomes final. The contract with Populous and Adams does not need approval from the Board of Public Works.
The two contracts are among the largest and most significant construction contracts that Maryland officials are likely to consider this year, along with a design-build contract to replace the Francis Scott Key Bridge that collapsed in March.
The stadium authority’s action is also a sign that the state and club are getting closer to making a new round of ballpark upgrades under the Orioles’ new ownership team led by David Rubenstein.
The state offered funding for ballpark improvements as an incentive to get the Orioles to sign a new lease after the team’s previous one expired in 2023. A funding package was also offered to the Baltimore Ravens for improvements to M&T Bank Stadium, and the Ravens are working with a design team led by Gensler.
Populous, legally Populous Holdings Inc., is a global architectural and design practice that specializes in sports facilities, arenas and convention centers. It’s a successor to HOK Sport, the sports design firm that served as the original architect for Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which is frequently listed as one of the best-liked baseball parks in the U. S. Populous’s more recent projects include The MSG Sphere in Las Vegas; Co-op Live in Manchester, United Kingdom and Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, considered one of the world’s most sustainable arenas.
Many of the HOK principals who worked on Oriole Park in the early 1990s have retired or passed away. The design team for the next series of improvements will be led by Stewart Ervie, who did work on Oriole Park while with HOK and joined Populous in 1987.
Yai Waite, vice president of procurement for the stadium authority, said at its board meeting on Tuesday that seven firms submitted proposals to serve as the architect for the Oriole Park improvements and three were invited to make presentations last spring to a selection panel that included both stadium authority and Orioles representatives.
The other finalists were teams headed by Gensler, a global firm with a Baltimore office, and MSA Design, headed by Michael Schuster and based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Of the three, Waite said, the Populous and Adams team received the highest technical score and offered the lowest fee for its services: just over $15 million.
Waite said the stadium authority received four proposals from construction management teams and shortlisted three before selecting the Gilbane-WarrenBuilds Joint Venture. The Board of Public Works will be asked to approve an initial contract of $1.097 million that will enable it to begin pre-construction work.
Philip Hutson, the stadium authority’s Vice President of Capital Projects and Planning at the Camden Yards Sport Complex, said the scope of ballpark improvements has not been defined.
He said the work essentially can be divided into two “buckets”: projects that will improve the “fan experience,” such as a new videoboard, and infrastructure projects that fans may not notice but are essential to keep the Oriole park operating in top condition, such as replacement of its chiller plant.
Hutson said he doesn’t have a time frame for when construction might begin on the improvements. He said one of the next steps, now that key consultants have been identified, will be for stadium authority officials to meet with Orioles representatives to come up with a list of improvements they’d like to carry out and use that to guide the planning.
