That time San Diego nearly had a floating ballpark

Famous Irish designer and architect Eileen Gray probably said it best way back in the early 20th century.

"To create, one must first question everything."

It's hard to know if the city council members in San Diego were familiar with Gray or that quote or anything having to do with architecture in the 1960s, but they definitely were questioning the way sports stadiums could be built.

Forget copying classics like Fenway Park or Wrigley Field. Forget new-age domes. Forget land, even.

In 1964, the Chargers and future Padres franchise were nearly gifted a multi-purpose structure out where Great White sharks roamed. Where motor boats cruised by. Where no arena had ever been constructed before.

Out in the salty waters of Mission Bay.

America, in the 1960s, was a time of change. A period when new things might be possible.

There were drastic transformations in societal norms, music and style. There was space travel. And baseball, as it had throughout its life intertwining with U.S. history, mirrored that cultural shift.

"It does seem to be a moment of time where the concept of architectural thinking was very futuristic," Janet Smith, EVP of Dodger Planning and Development, told me over Zoom. "Sort of man on the moon kind of thinking. Maybe America was just willing to believe in itself in that era."

Smith, currently an SVP with the Dodgers in planning and development -- who also runs a women-led sports design and development firm called Canopy -- is one of the more legendary baseball stadium architects in history.

She recently helped with re-imagining the outfield pavilion at Dodger Stadium, she brought seats to the Green Monster at Fenway Park in the early 2000s, she managed the design of Camden Yards in the 1990s. You know, the retro-style look that nearly every new baseball stadium has since adopted.

"It's so easy today to kind of poo-poo the multi-purpose stadiums and say, 'Oh, that didn't work,'" Smith said. "But when I read things like this, it tells me when the ideas were being incubated, they weren't boring."

The floating design was proposed by Boyle Engineering, a local architectural firm, to then-Chargers owner Barron Hilton. Head architect Stanley French, who would later also pitch the idea of the San Diego airport runway being atop a body of water, was the one who thought up the concept.

"My dad was pretty quirky and way out there," French's son, Mark, told me in a phone call. "A lot of these architects are. They're artists and then they're architects afterwards. He'd come up with an idea, and we had seven children and two foster kids, and we'd all look at him like, 'You are crazy.'"

The Mission Bay project could fit 50,000 people to watch the Chargers, the Major League Padres (once they made their imminent jump from the Pacific Coast League) and even various aquatic events happening out in the bay near Fiesta Island. You know, jet-ski contests, surfing competitions ... surfing dog competitions.

It wouldn't be built entirely on the water, though. That'd be crazy.

The grandstand behind home plate would be the anchor, constructed on land. It could hold 13,000 spectators. The two wings were the parts on the water. They could hold 20,000 fans each and would float back and forth on ... I guess you can call them moats? That way, they could be in place for baseball games, but also be moved along to fit as part of the Chargers' stadium. Here's a side-by-side look at the blueprint pitch from back in the '60s:

Renowned San Diego sports columnist Jack Murphy called it “the most daring, yet practical concept in stadium building since Houston discovered the dome."

Hilton loved the idea, saying it would be “the finest home for a football team that I can imagine.”

The city also liked the plan, both for its uniqueness and, mostly, its cost: Initial findings had the price at $20 million, similar to other normal stadiums at the time.

But could it actually work? How would it actually work?

"Well, I'd assume you'd try and use the water as a track," Smith told me. "And have cables, perhaps, to pull that. I'd assume you wouldn't be putting something on the ocean floor. You'd try to use the water as your glide. Otherwise, it's just a novelty if the water's not working for you."

One engineer at the time even joked they could have circus elephants pushing and pulling the multi-purpose stands back and forth. Elephants, sharks and baseball -- who wouldn't pay to see all that in one afternoon?

But after a second assessment of the Mission Bay site by another architectural firm, things, sadly, began to fall apart. The costs to build a floating stadium were indeed not very reasonable -- soaring north of $40 million. According to French, the idea lost by one vote at a city council meeting.

"It also sounds like the engineering was never really worked out," Smith said. "As the price tag mushroomed and the engineering became more complicated, it was just a moment in time when they were like, 'Uncle, we can't keep trying to figure this out. We should figure out how to make something work.'"

And figure it out they did.

San Diego Stadium, later designated Jack Murphy Stadium (among other name changes), was constructed for $27 million in two years. Funny enough, Frank Hope -- who designed Jack Murphy -- lived on the same street as Stanley French (French's son says the two battled for city building projects for decades). The Chargers played at Jack Murphy from 1967-2017, while the expansion Padres called it home from the time they joined MLB in 1969 all the way up through the 2003 season. The multi-purpose facility was located about 20 minutes inland from Mission Bay near Mission Valley. It did not have sea life roaming by, or boats, or elephants. It did not float. But, when filled, it housed close to 70,000 screaming fans for 50 years.

The idea of a floating stadium didn't totally go away after the more conventional San Diego stadium was built -- Councilman Jack Walsh stated "the idea has a lot of merit." But in the decades since, that sort of idea has never really come up as a viable option. Smith, who's currently working with the Pirates on some upgrades to PNC Park, mentioned Pittsburgh's wild (seriously insane) idea of building a stadium on top of one of the city's rivers as being in that same vein. But nowadays, architects have to take pricing, practicality and some new factors into consideration when thinking about construction.

"Today, we would have environmental concerns that weren't as prevalent at that time," Smith told me. "Think about the Westway highway in New York that kicked around for 30 years before they finally were like, 'Nope, there's striped bass in the Hudson River and we're not gonna put a highway there.' It sounds like some of these ideas kicked around for a long time, and then they were probably like, 'OK, it's not gonna work. Is there a simpler version of it that can be done?'"

That fun, dreamy vision of a ballpark floating in the sea might end up being just that. A dream.

Cover art by Ben Marra