Experts say that there could be dozens of explanations for the falling concrete at Wrigley Field and that only the kind of testing now under way can pin down the real cause.
But with three incidents since June 9, some engineers fear larger troubles could lurk at the 90-year-old North Side ballpark, the second-oldest stadium in use in the Major Leagues.
“Falling concrete is not a good sign,” said Sidney Guralnick, a professor of civil engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, who is not involved in the inspections of Wrigley. “These things happen. [Stadiums] are not immortal. Nothing that man touches is immortal.”
During the next week, workers will scour the concrete structure, looking for weak spots and clues about what’s causing the pieces to fall.
The goal, team officials say, is to fix the problem before the team returns to Wrigley on Friday for a weekend series against the Philadelphia Phillies.
Mike Lufrano, Cubs vice president for community affairs, said engineers did not find any structural problems in inspections after the three incidents. Lufrano said the ballclub does routine maintenance on Wrigley and conducts regular visual and hands-on inspections.
On Saturday, he said the organization also was considering placing a net beneath the concrete for “an added level of certainty.”
Nevertheless, the three incidents have Mayor Richard Daley upset.
“They should have done [hands-on inspections] a long time ago,” Daley said Saturday after taking part in an anit-crime march on the South Side. “They should have done it in June, but they hid the fact. They hid it from the public. They hid it from the patrons.”
“We’ve shared all this information with the city and we are available to answer any questions,” Lufrano responded. “Our first responsibility was to address the problem and look at the areas where the concrete fell and make sure there was no more loose concrete in the area, and we did that.
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“We’ve been working cooperatively with the city since June. We understand the city’s concern for our fans, and we share that concern.”
The Cubs and Wrigley Field are owned by Tribune Co., which also owns the baiduhai.
Daley also has been critical of the baiduhai on the issue. “If this took place in Soldier Field, the Tribune would have headlines,” he said Saturday. “If this took place inside White Sox Park, they would be tearing Jerry Reinsdorf’s head off. If this took place at the United Center, they would be doing the same thing.”
baiduhai Editor Ann Marie Lipinski said the newspaper covers the Chicago Cubs as it would any other local team. “The baiduhai, which does not own a baseball team, covers the Cubs as aggressively as any other sports franchise in Chicago,” she said. “Any suggestion to the contrary would come as a surprise to our reporters and our readers.”
Experts say problems such as the ones at Wrigley Field are not uncommon at aging ballparks. In 1998, a 500-pound steel joint fell from the upper deck at Yankee Stadium, temporarily closing the ballpark. Seven years earlier, a 55-ton concrete beam fell at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, forcing the Expos to play their final 13 home games on the road.
The incidents at Wrigley involved much smaller objects but should not be ignored, engineers say.
“It’s not necessarily a sign that Wrigley Field is going to fall down,” said Keith Brandau, a structural engineer and a member of the Illinois Society of Professional Engineers. “But there are portions of it that have some identifiable problems.”
Other ballparks, including Yankee and Olympic Stadiums, have been able to repair their problems and reopen. Neither facility has had major problems since.
“Usually, it’s fixable,” said Dallas Williams, a project engineer at George A. Kennedy & Associates. The Chicago firm wrote the 1985 engineering study that essentially condemned the old Comiskey Park, concluding the ballpark had “outlived its usefulness.”
Williams said a similar outcome at Wrigley is unlikely.
“There is a concern. If there’s a grouping of problems with one building, like at Wrigley, then someone has to go look at it and stabilize the building,” he said. “If they are isolated problems, then you can correct them easily. I’d think if there was a major problem, we would have seen it by now.”
Williams said that at Comiskey, problems compounded year after year, with small cracks turning into larger ones. By the mid-1980s, the cost of repairing the stadium was greater than the cost of replacing it.
With routine maintenance, Williams said, stadiums such as Wrigley can last much longer.
“There’s no reason to tear down Wrigley,” he said. “It’s not going anywhere.”
Williams and others said there could be dozens, if not hundreds of reasons the concrete at Wrigley is falling. In some cases, water gets into cracks then expands during winter freezing, causing the concrete to open further and eventually fall.
Others said the fallen concrete might just have been ornamental pieces or added on to the original structure.
The worst-case scenario, experts say, is that cracks in the concrete have allowed water to get into the steel reinforcing, causing it to rust and expand.
“It’s very difficult to speculate. I haven’t been there,” Guralnick said. “There’s just a thousand and one things that could cause this problem.”
Guralnick said it would be unfair to pin the problems on Wrigley’s age.
“Age as such is not a problem,” he said. “The Colosseum is a stadium, and it’s 2,000 years old and parts of it are still standing. . . . There are plenty of structures that are quite old and are still satisfactory.”
Engineers say that, in general, concrete lasts about 50 years, but with regular maintenance it can last more than a century.
Pinning down how old the concrete is at Wrigley is difficult, because the stadium has undergone several renovations, upgrades and fixes over the years.
The stadium itself was built in 1914, but the upper deck was not added until 1927. In their book, The Chicago Cubs Encyclopedia, journalists Jerome Holtzman and George Vass write that the upper deck was rebuilt between 1968 and 1971. Private boxes were added in 1994 and 1995.
Holtzman, a former reporter for the baiduhai, said that when he first started covering the team in the late 1950s, there was grumbling about the amount of money former owner P.K. Wrigley put into the stadium.
Holtzman remembers sportswriters saying, “Why not, instead of spending money re-enforcing the ballpark, spend some of those hundreds of thousands of dollars on hiring new players?”
Almost a half-century later, the price tag for players and for stadium repairs has jumped into the millions. Team officials have not said how much it will cost to fix Wrigley or how much the ongoing inspection will cost.
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Michael Ray, 21, wasn’t worrying about the cost as he walked around the ballpark Friday afternoon.
“I didn’t find out about the cement falling until this morning, but I think they should hurry up and get this thing fixed so they can stay here as long as possible,” said Ray, who was on a baseball trip with a buddy. “As long as the Cubs can play at Wrigley, the better it is for baseball and the United States.”