New Ballpark's Exit, Entry Strategies

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FOR BASEBALL LOVERS in New York and Chicago, arriving at venerable ballparks like Shea, Yankee, Wrigley and Comiskey via public transit can be just as exhilarating a part of the game day experience as a tense 7th inning stretch. Anyone who has taken a Flushing-bound No. 7 train to see a Mets home game knows full well the anticipation that builds when you see the stadium off in the distance as the rooftops of Queens whiz by below.

It's the kind of truly urban experience you can't find in Los Angeles, Houston and most other cities with baseball venues that lack rail links. Even in Washington, which lacks the skyline of New York or Chicago, Nationals fans coming from Maryland on the elevated section of the Blue and Orange lines that serve the Stadium-Armory station, pictured here, get a grand — albeit brief — view of RFK Stadium, itself very much a landmark of the nation's capital, sitting squarely on the east-west axis connecting the U.S. Capitol with the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

On Tuesday, officials from Metro, the District and the Nats broke ground on the expansion of the Green Line's Navy Yard station, the closest transit access point to the Nationals' South Capitol Street ballpark, which is currently under construction. The plans will mean a drastically different ballpark entry and exit experience than what urban stadium visitors are used to here — but that doesn't mean they won't like it.

» ARRIVING AT THE NAVY YARD STATION: Currently, Navy Yard is one of Metro's more lightly-used stations, situated in a Near Southeast area that's not especially well-trafficked. But baseball crowds and additional commercial, residential and federal development — including the almost-ready new headquarters for the U.S. Department of Transportation — will change that.

And Metro, using District funds (until the fiscal 2007 federal budget is approved), is expanding the Navy Yard station's western entrance at Half and M streets SE, one block north from the stadium site, seen here in a photo taken in December by Jacqueline Dupree, who edits the comprehensive Near Southeast D.C. Redevelopment Web site.

The expanded station, expected to accommodate 15,000 people per hour expected on game days, will feature a rebuilt surface-level entry area that will be part of a new 275,000 square-foot office building. According to Metro, it'll have a "dramatic two-story truss at the corner of Half and M Streets to allow the building to span over the Metro entrance and integrate the station into the building envelope." (Think of Rosslyn's above-ground faregate area with better design.)

With direct access to Half Street SE, the road expected to be the centerpiece of the baseball entertainment district, Nats fans will emerge from the subway to see what is promised to be a vibrant streetscape approach to the stadium site. (The stadium's planned grand stairway, however, will front the Anacostia River at Potomac Avenue SE, which will not be in view from the north.)

» LEAVING BY FOOT: Since the Green Line doesn't stretch into Virginia, the Old Dominion's Nats fans will be encouraged to walk from Near Southeast to the Capitol South station to board the Virginia-accessible Orange or Blue lines. It's only a 10-15 minute walk and could be a time-saver, given the potential for crowding on the Green Line and at the L'Enfant Plaza transfer station.

The most direct route to Capitol South is via New Jersey Avenue, one of the District's overlooked L'Enfant-designed grand avenues, pictured in these two photos by Dupree.
Although the avenue might seem pretty dead right now, planned development and streetscaping is primed to make the approach to the Capitol campus far more attractive, although the looming Southeast Freeway viaduct will still block the view depending on where you're standing.

So while fans heading to the new ballpark won't get the same eye-pleasing view of sweeping toward the stadium from above, the process of going from the perpetual twilight of a Metrorail station to the surface might be a more dramatic approach — even more striking, perhaps, than the view Mets fans get from the elevated No. 7 train. And for many, the trip home could start with a quick walk toward a uniquely D.C. landmark — the Capitol, with its spotlights shining in the night sky.

Will it be a more pleasing experience than the creaky trips to other urban ballparks? We'll have to wait until next year to know for sure.

Stadium-Armory photo by Kevin Clark/The Washington Post; all others courtesy Jacqueline Dupree