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Pittsburgh stadium's reviews underwhelming
By Todd Hartman, News Staff Writer Forget the brouhaha over naming Invesco Field at Mile High. Stadium officials in Denver ought to consider themselves lucky. In Pittsburgh, site of new Heinz Field, home of the Steelers, the shiny stadium with its 65,000 yellow seats is the butt of jokes comparing it to a giant bowl of corn chips, a mustard pit, even a supersize cheeseburger. Junk food allusions aside, some fans complain that officials took it too easy on expenses. "It is 57 varieties of CHEAP!" one reader wrote to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "The yellow seats are bad enough, but bleacher seats in a brand new stadium!" Not everyone is so harsh. And the stadium's architects and team officials have reminded fans that the color of the seats is not really yellow, but "Steeler Gold." Black seats, they point out, would absorb too much sunlight, making the stadium too hot. The stadium, which hosts its first game Sunday, cost $281 million. Of that, $123 million came from the Steelers. Various sources of public money covered the rest. Heinz, the company famous for ketchup, its Heinz 57 sauce and the phrase "57 varieties," paid -- no kidding -- $57 million for the naming rights. Though this stadium cost $120 million less than the Broncos new home, it was built to accommodate future additions of seats and luxury boxes if the need arises, said Greg Yesko, spokesman for Pittsburgh's Sports and Exhibition Authority. Heinz Field seats 11,000 fewer fans than Invesco. Yesko downplayed the jokes and controversies over Heinz Field. He emphasized that the new stadium is one piece of a massive, $370 million publicly funded overhaul of Pittsburgh's riverfront area -- a 25-acre swath sandwiched by the new football stadium and the baseball Pirates' new PNC Park. "We're creating a prime development area," Yesko said. Like Invesco, Heinz Field was christened with a concert -- in this case 'N Sync, the teen pop band that makes the girls swoon. Yellow seats or not, architecture critics gave Heinz Field mixed reviews. One, for the Post-Gazette, praised the view of the skyline from the stadium, but was less gracious about the view of it. She described the new stadium as "a mammoth ice cube of gray steel and glass, out of which pops the gaping maw of the upper decks and the canopies." The canopies are the white fabric covers that top the stadium's circular ramp towers. Some fans and critics have turned thumbs down, comparing them with giant cocktail umbrellas. One fan called them "constant reminders of a rainy day." But other touches are more popular. The stadium's use of exposed steel was a salute to Pittsburgh's industrial history. Others compliment its high-tech look, and the way its oval bowl sits within a glass-walled building, allowing the sides of the stadium to align with neighborhood streets. Steeler team spokesman Ron Wahl paid the stadium a back-handed compliment, or perhaps a well-disguised insult, telling a Post-Gazette reporter: "We never said it would be a beautiful stadium. We said it would be a great stadium for football." For this season at least, Heinz Field has one big advantage over Invesco. Officials were able to knock down old Three Rivers Stadium -- they blew it up -- and haul away the debris weeks ahead of schedule, clearing the way for road and parking lot work on the site that will make Heinz Field traffic run more smoothly on opening day. No such luck for Denver's stadium officials, who wanted to tear down the old Mile High and put up the parking lot. City concerns about making sure a stadium was available in case Invesco Field wasn't ready in time left the demolition job for after football season. Heinz Field officials may have heard the best news two weeks ago, when 30,000 attended an open house. Fans, eager to try out their seats and hungry for football, were upbeat about their new home. One fan told a Pittsburgh reporter he didn't understand all the fuss about the yellow seats. "I can't wait for the games to start," he said. Contact Todd Hartman at (303) 892-5048 or hartmant@RockyMountainNews.com.
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