The Weekly: The End is Near for American Family Field

The fading green paint on the roof panels. Outdated signage. The bracing placed in spots along the inner facade along the tracks for the roof. Visiting the clubhouse last fall, it's clear those facilities were built at the turn of the century with the turn of the century in mind. 

The Weekly is a column on the Brewers. 'On' may do heavier lifting on some weeks than others.

Put bluntly, what is now American Family Field is not aging well, and with the Brewers' lease expiring in 2030 at the soonest, it's not too soon to wonder what comes next. In fact, thinking about updates -- or even a replacement -- for the ballpark should have already been on the radar since before the five-county sales tax that amortized Miller Park's debt expired in 2020.

In 2030, American Family Field will be approaching 30 years old. Mark Attanasio will be 73 years old. By way of comparison, Bud Selig sold the Brewers to Attanasio's investment group in 2004 at age 70.

Failure by all stakeholders involved to get out in front of the stadium issue brings us back to the mid-90s, when Selig threatened to move the team to the Carolinas if the public wouldn't help with stadium financing. Or, worse yet, potentially to the early 1960s, when Milwaukee County's bumbling and bombastic leadership all but chased the Braves to Atlanta.

Failure by Attanasio and the Brewers to be forthright about the need for significant structural updates sooner than later will tell more than anyone might be comfortable admitting about what current ownership's next chapters and/or exit strategy might be. 

To be fair, it's understandable that there may not be much public appetite for this kind of talk. And, generally speaking, this writer does not believe it appropriate for government to subsidize or otherwise bankroll the construction or renovation of sports stadiums without either a clear, real return on investment or otherwise not being left on the hook.

In other words, if a deal is to be struck by partial way of public financing, it needs to be less Foxconn and more Fiserv Forum.

And even if a renovation of American Family Field is agreed to, there is no guarantee that won't be a bandage on a bullet wound: Kansas City's Kauffman Stadium underwent a $250m renovation between 2007 and 2009, and the Royals, once quietly, are now openly looking at buying property either downtown or near the 18th and Vine historic district to build a new stadium. The Kansas City Star led with that story just last weekend. They also just changed hands in 2019, from David Glass to Kansas City energy magnate John Sherman.

(By the way, if you haven't been to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum at 18th and Vine, you are missing out on an incredible experience. And a new ballpark there would be pretty cool, if it weren't for the fact that The K is one of the best baseball experiences in America.)

Let's take Kauffman as a baseline: $250m in 2009 is roughly $310m today. If renovations were to start later this decade, that puts us at a minimum of $330m, and that's not considering any major work to the bespoke retractable roof system.

If Kauffman Stadium is any bellwether, saying nothing of Atlanta or Arlington, we should be clear-eyed about the fact that we can sink upwards of $400m (or more) into American Family Field in a project around 2028 or 2030 only for the team to have eyes on something somewhere else within a decade, or we should be looking at something somewhere else. Because if we're not, the Brewers will, and that somewhere won't be in the state of Wisconsin. Fiserv Forum may have been a Pyrrhic victory this way.

In reality, American Family Field was not built to be timeless in the way that Camden Yards, Oracle Park or PNC Park were. That element of design was sacrificed for the roof, rightly, to guarantee 81 home games a year. (An indirectly-related aside: Fans to the west of Wisconsin too-conveniently forget that Target Field was supposed to and should have a roof, but dithering and heel-dragging among public officials and Twins leadership alike allowed the cost to build the stadium to spiral to the point where a roof was no longer affordable.)

The Brewers are expected to present a report in 'early summer', according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Tom Daykin, and we'll all have a clearer sense of where things might be headed. 

In the meantime, we are left with a disquieting fact: that without a proactive and assertive response by the region and the state, and a shared willingness by all parties to engage in good faith, the Brewers might be headed the way of the Braves. I honestly don't think anyone wants that to happen, but without a clear and active want for that to not happen, what other option is there? To dare history to not repeat itself?

It's not the conversation anyone wants to have. I get that. It's much more fun to talk about dominant pitching and walk-off dingers and the most frustrating, incredible and frustratingly incredible Brewers team we've seen in some time. But we can't root, root, root for the home team unless that team has a home. And the time to talk about what home looks like and what it should be is now.