“Thank you for your patience. Please Pardon Our Dirt.”
Those words on the Asheville Tourists’ website make one thing clear: 2025 will not be a typical baseball season at 101-year-old McCormick Field.
The Tourists’ 66 home games will be played at a stadium that’s doubling as a construction zone with fencing, temporary buildings and heavy equipment. That’s because in August, the minor league team began an 18-month, $38.5 million renovation that will bring the stadium up to standards required by Major League Baseball (MLB) under a 2021 directive. Work is expected to be completed by the 2026 season.
“We don’t really have full access to the ballpark to do our normal prep to get ready, so it’s going to be a little bit rough,” says Brian DeWine, the team’s owner and president. “There are definitely hurdles, but they are hurdles that we were willing to take on so we could play baseball this summer.”
No construction will be done during games, but fans will definitely notice signs of the ongoing work:
- The field will only be open during home games. For most of those games, the gates will open one hour before the game starts. Visitors will not be permitted at any other time.
- The Tourists Trap team store likewise will only be open during home games.
- The box office will open two hours before each game.
- Some seating sections will have limited views of the left field corner during the season.
- All seats will be assigned during the season, including those that normally are general admission.
- The Wicked Weed Brewing Pavilion and some other parts of the ballpark will be closed.
“The fan aspect of the ballpark is not changing that much from this year compared to other years,” DeWine says. “We’re still going to have all of our food and beverage stations open. We’re still doing fireworks [after Friday games]. We’re still doing promotions. At the end of the day, after the national anthem is played, nine players will run out there and play nine innings. We are still putting on the same great show that we always want to put on. You’ll just have to walk through some construction fencing to get there and there may be some areas that are a little harder to maneuver.”
Funding for the McCormick Field Centennial Restoration and Capital Improvements is coming from the Tourists and the City of Asheville, which owns the stadium, as well as the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority and the Buncombe County government.
Improvements will include an expanded front entrance and plaza, a new ticket office, new party areas, a state-of-the-art scoreboard and new or renovated clubhouses for both teams. Other additions will include hitting cages, designated facilities for women coaches and umpires, LED lights, an Asheville Baseball History Walk and a new playing surface.
The seating bowl, which has a capacity of about 4,000, will be mostly unchanged, DeWine says.
“It’s kind of a crazy thing to be excited about, but I’m most excited about the new concourse and front entrance,” he says. “It’s just going to be such an amazing welcome mat for the ballpark, an entrance that when you come in, you realize where you are right away. Whereas before, you were walking on a closed-off street. You had 10 feet under an arch to get in.”
The last major renovations to the McCormick Field were between the 1991 and the 1992 seasons, which didn’t pose the challenges the team faces this year.
Buncombe County, which owned the field at the time, spent $3 million to tear down the aging ballpark, including the rotting wooden grandstands, and build a brick-framed concrete structure on the same site. On April 17, 1992, a capacity crowd of more than 4,000 fans showed up on a rainy night to check out the new stadium and its more comfortable and less obstructed seats, expanded concession areas, brighter lighting, a large plaza area, nine 22-foot arches over the plaza walkway and a cantilevered roof covering the middle portion of the grandstand.
But Bill Ballew, author of A History of Professional Baseball in Asheville, says corners were cut during 1991-92 construction and the new McCormick Field was obsolete almost from the moment it opened. Plus, a slew of minor league parks with “all the bells and whistles” were constructed soon after. The current upgrades would have been necessary to keep the Tourists in town even if MLB had not mandated changes in 2021, he says.
DeWine says he doesn’t anticipate many complaints or concerns from fans about construction.
“I think most people understand that it’s a temporary inconvenience, and they’re going to get a much better ballpark experience when it’s all done,” he says.
Before you comment
The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.