While it hasstorical roots, this place is a 21st century facility, built with a “green thumb.” A Twins fact sheet references the organization’s commitment to “operational efficiency, environmental stewardship and social responsibility.”
Target Field is a mass transit oriented destination, more so than most major league stadiums. The park was built emphasizing the use of local extracted, salvaged and manufactured materials. The stadium features water saving fixtures that will save 4.2 million gallons of potable water per year, according to the Twins organization.
There is also a rainwater recycling system to capture, conserve and reuse rainwater. Excess food from stadium operations will be donated to local charitable organizations.
Target Field designers benefitted from seeing the best and worst of a major league baseball stadium boom that began almost 20 years ago. The result is a ballpark that will be extraordinary in many ways, even able to battle inhospitable weather.
Twins Sports Inc. president Jerry Bell told Sports Headliners the drainage system for the field is so efficient that a ballgame could have been played the night following an afternoon tornado that rocked south Minneapolis last summer. That storm delivered about three inches of rain yet Bell said the Twins wouldn’t have cancelled a game that night.
Asked how many more inches the drainage system could accommodate, Bell said, “I don’t want to find out.”
What baseball fans did learn on Saturday was they have a heck of a ballpark. Not even the awful sound of college baseball’s aluminum bats dented that opinion on the historic day of March 27, 2010.