Minute Maid Park is home to the Houston Astros of the MLB. The stadium opened on March 30, 2000 as the new home for the Astros replacing their previous iconic home the Astrodome. The stadium was the first retractable roof stadium in Houston, opening just before the NFL’s Houston Texans NRG Stadium.
Parts of Minute Maid Park are much older than you may think, with the historic Union Station portion being opened in 1911. After World War II train traffic to the station began to decline and with the construction of a new modern Amtrak station in 1974, the historic Union Station was abandoned.
20 years later things were not looking well for the Houston Astros. Team owner Drayton McLane began publicly discussing a new stadium as the aging Astrodome was now over 30 years old and had never been seriously renovated. Other rumors began to spread of a sale to a Washington DC businessman who wanted to move the team from Houston to the nation's capital. After much discussion and debate between the Astros and public officials over where a stadium would be located, it was decided that a new baseball stadium would be built next to the iconic Astrodome for $250 million dollars fully funded by the county, with the Astros paying any cost overruns.
Although an agreement was set in place, plans were about to drastically change. In August 1996 Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay pledged a large amount of money if the stadium were to be built downtown. Because of the influence of Lay and the Enron Corporation at the time, the plan was put to a vote with a country referendum where it passed 51% for and 49% against. With the plan approved a new tax was introduced to pay for the stadium on such things as hotels and rental cars, and the Enron Corporation signed a $100 million dollar 30 year naming rights deal.
The stadium was designed by the experienced firm of HOK Sport, and integrated many unique features including retaining the historic Union Station and using it as retail and office space, as well as building a hill with a flagpole into center field. The retractable roof and artificial grass were a large departure from the enclosed and cavernous feel of the Astrodome.Groundbreaking for the stadium occurred on October 30, 1997 and amongst the attendees was Enron CEO Kenneth Lay.
Disaster struck when Enron completely collapsed in 2001 due to a large financial scandal. Company leadership including Lay were indicted on many financial fraud charges, and the new ballpark was stuck with the unfortunate name of Enron Field. On February 5, 2002 Astros owners took Enron to court to force them to immediately come to an agreement to drop the name Enron Field. In the end the Astros ended up paying Enron $2.1 million to break the 30 year deal 29 years early, and the new stadium became known as Astros Field. In June 2002 the Coca-Cola company bought the naming rights to the stadium for the same $100 million dollar price tag that Enron had previously paid, and named it after their subsidiary Minute Maid, a name that continues to this day.
Throughout its 20 year history renovations have been made to the facility including the addition of WiFi in 2004, and the first video board specifically for closed captioning. Major additions took place in time for the 2011 season as many of the scoreboards and ribbon boards were replaced with new HD screens from Daktronics, including what was at the time the 4th largest video board in the MLB El Grande which measured 54 feet by 124 feet. Other notable renovations include repainting the entire facility navy blue and orange when the Astros changed their colors in 2013 and the removal of Tal’s Hill which was replaced with new seating areas, concessions stands, and a new bank of escalators.
Despite its rocky first couple years with the scandalous name of Enron Field, Minute Maid is a fine example of a modern indoor/outdoor baseball stadium situated in the heart of a downtown area. Minute Maid Park will continue to be home to the Astros for years to come as renovations and improvements have kept the stadium feeling modern over 20 years after it first opened. With that Enron Field or Minute Maid Park is the first baseball stadium to join the Archive of Everything. Leave a like if you enjoyed the video, comment future stadiums I should cover and as always this is Matt from the Archive of Everything and I’ll see you all real soon!
