Looking at the whole package, HohoKam Stadium’s location is probably its primary weak spot. As with all Cactus League parks except the Brewers park, it’s not terrible, but HohoKam is not located in a particularly nice area. This is excellent team branding.Īlso, those “essentials” matter: while the park doesn’t have substantive architectural intentions or any outstanding features, it doesn’t have any glaring flaws either.
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Inside and out, just try to count spaces that aren’t green, gold, or grey or don’t have some sort of Athletics’ reference. It turns out that the “rebranding” element and “a fresh coat of paint” was everything. So, I went into HohoKam Stadium with tepid expectations, but I came out pleasantly surprised because the facility possessed something that many of those other parks in Arizona lacked: a regional flare. This was far from the ambitious projects undertaken across Florida and Arizona, as Mesa clearly wasn’t trying to build a state-of-the-art facility. The blueprints looked identical to the old version with the structure maintained, just with new “essentials” like seats and scoreboards and a fresh coat of paint. To my great disappointment, the renamed HohoKam Stadium seemed like a rebranding project instead of a renovation project. Somewhat like Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota, HokoKam was the kind of facility with basic bones that you could remake into whatever you wanted.
HOHOKAM STADIUM FOOD SERIES
After a series of very nice renovations in Florida, some of which were more creative than newer projects, I had high expectations. When I heard the Athletics were moving in after a full-scale renovation in 2015, I was excited. HohoKam was very much the New Comiskey Park of 90s spring training, if you will.
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![hohokam stadium food hohokam stadium food](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/19/3e/ed/193eedf230bee91c503adf03856bd48b.jpg)
It had all of the requisite qualities of a decent facility (360-degree concourse, berms, party decks, etc.), but it was always a remarkably bland and sterile place to see a game, yet somehow wasn’t completely inadequate either. While the site dates back to 1977, the 2.0 version of HohoKam Park rebuilt for the Cubs in 1997 was pretty clearly the weakest link of its era.