Team outlines $24 million plan for standard maintenance and changes at T-Mobile Park
Fans in Seattle next year will get to watch 50-foot-tall salmon run across a new big screen.
The Ballpark Public Facilities District (the entity that oversees the Mariners stadium) met Monday to discuss a new round of standard maintenance and changes at T-Mobile Park. The Mariners brought forward 42 projects at an estimated $24.3 million to be completed next offseason. The top item is $9 million to replace for MarinersVision, the stadium’s main scoreboard and “dance cam” in centerfield. Mariners chief operating officer Trevor Gooby said the new screen is expected to be the same dimensions as the current screen, albeit with “new tech” behind it. The current screen is 57-feet tall and 202-feet wide and was the largest video screen in MLB when it was installed in 2013. Gooby said the team has pushed the useful life of the screen to its limit, with a number of dead pixels and the occasional outage prompting a change.
“You can play a baseball game without a video board,” Gooby said, “but you definitely notice when it’s not working.”
Last year, the team set aside $2.7 million for phase one of the project (i.e., procurement and paperwork). The $9 million this year is meant to buy the rest of the parts, put the screen together, and plug it in. The plan is to begin installing the screen shortly after the final game of the season, and it’s likely to be up and running by Opening Day 2026.
Other projects included in the upcoming budget:
- The Mariners continue their rolling replacement of escalators and elevators on the concourse. The team spent $1.4 million on the project last year; they’ll spend another $3.5 million this year; and they plan to spend at least $2 million next year as well. Gooby said they expect to have the full “vertical transportation system” updated by the end of 2028.
- There are several line items (and several million dollars) for technology. This includes everything from a cabling project to security updates to the system that scans your ticket and stores its data.
- $1 million is set aside for updates to concession stands. Gooby said the team has been renovating a few older eateries each year.
- Other items include $600,000 for new HVAC equipment, $500,000 to replace some seats and cupholders, $485,000 for various concrete to-dos, $400,000 to repaint steel channels and handrails, and $250,000 for the roof.
- Not included in the budget are any changes to the batter’s eye or anything else related to batter vision. The team does routine maintenance on the surface of the batter’s eye every few years. The next resurfacing is scheduled for 2027. The team replaced the outfield fence padding prior to the 2025 season, in case you noticed a deeper green and brighter yellow palette around the outfield (a factlet that didn’t make the final cut in the tour of the batter’s eye). You can bid on sections of the old fence through Sunday.
- The budget does include $200,000 for an anonymous “statue.” The report doesn’t say what the statue is, where it will be located, or when it will be revealed. Gooby didn’t share details about it at the meeting, citing a future announcement. I was able to uncover this rendering from deep within the bowels of T-Mobile Park:
Leo Reynolds on flickr
Most projects discussed Monday will be completed in the offseason. The cost for these projects (and the projects themselves) could change over the next few months, as board members won’t approve a final budget until September. The Mariners when planning for the stadium stick close to the wisdom of the Long-Term Capital Needs Assessment report published in 2022 — a nearly 300-page document outlining the next 20 years of maintenance at the park. The new scoreboard will need to last until the newer scoreboard is installed in 2038.