Summary:
Over the course of her career, Janet Marie Smith has set the standard for revitalizing sports stadiums, creating spaces that serve and honor their communities. In 2023, Smith and Fran Weld launched Canopy Team, specializing in the design and management of sports projects. With projects like PNC Park, Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge, and Qatar’s Education City Stadium under its belt, Canopy is setting the standard for community-focused stadium design.
Recently, Canopy Team applied this approach to the renovation of Raimondi Park, home to the Pioneer League’s Oakland Ballers. Although the ballpark wasn’t as large in scope as some of Canopy’s other projects, it faced very tight deadlines, particularly for producing final renderings and animations. Senior Design Manager Thomas DeVoss turned to Enscape to ensure he could deliver the project on time and showcase how the park would fit and function in the neighborhood.
With the Oakland Athletics moving to Las Vegas at the end of the 2024 season, the city faced a void. The Oakland Ballers stepped up to the plate to fill this gap and, in the process, helped to revitalize a blighted area of town.
With a budget of $1.6 million and a concrete deadline of June 4 for the home opener, Canopy Team faced an exciting challenge. In just a few months, Canopy sourced art installations, obtained permits, secured vendors, and collaborated with the Ballers team to organize clubhouses, bleachers, a scoreboard, a pressbox, and the new field, complete with drainage and landscape improvements (“hats off to Canopy Project Managers Michelle and Ben!” DeVoss adds).
As everything came together, the Ballers wanted to announce the renovations to the public. Since private investors funded the project, generating buzz and excitement was crucial to driving ticket sales for the upcoming season. They also wanted to show how the park would integrate with the city as a space for the community to gather. With the deadline only a week away and no accurate 3D models, DeVoss stepped in, using Enscape to produce the renderings and animations that were key to the public unveiling.
While DeVoss usually works on projects over months, the Raimondi Park project had only days to spare before it was due to be announced. Despite opening day creeping up, the park was in no state to be photographed. “The field wasn't ready at all,” DeVoss explains. “There was no grass on the field, all the netting was down, the bleachers weren't even constructed, so photos wouldn't have sufficed. They needed a visual that they couldn't photograph at that point.”
DeVoss began in AutoCAD and then used SketchUp with Enscape, importing Google Earth imagery of downtown Oakland via the Site Context feature. “This really helped show the connection between ballpark and city since I could show the view of the skyline from the bleachers.”
With the ballpark now clearly looking like part of Oakland, the assets needed to reflect how the park would become a place for people to gather and celebrate. This was especially important with the looming departure of the Athletics casting a shadow over the city.
Using Enscape’s Asset Library, DeVoss added 3D tree and people assets, demonstrating how Oakland residents could soon enjoy a dedicated vendor space, new ADA-compliant bleachers for 4,000 fans, bathroom areas, and a festive atmosphere with Oakland-centric art decorating their new home field.
The completed renderings weren’t the only assets the Ballers team needed. As the deadline approached, they also requested an animation. Although Enscape’s animation feature was not a tool DeVoss regularly used, he was able to quickly re-familiarize himself with it. “I hadn’t used Enscape’s animation features in years, but it’s easy and user-friendly, so I was able to get a pretty good result quickly.”
Canopy submitted the assets created using Enscape to the Ballers team on time and ready for the public to view. Although the renderings weren't the most detailed or photorealistic DeVoss had ever produced, these more simple depictions proved to be more appropriate for this type of local-scale project.
"It was a challenge because of the super fast time frame," he says. "It was a little stressful starting from scratch knowing that these images would be on TV press interviews and widely distributed on social media in a week, but I’m happy to say that it all worked out!”
After the big announcement to the press and public, the renderings were widely shared across various news websites and social media platforms. The announcement and images received an overwhelmingly positive response, with hundreds of enthusiastic comments looking forward to the upcoming season.
"It was just one of these projects where everybody's happy to see it," DeVoss says. "When [the Ballers] put the images on Instagram, I went to see what it was saying—100% positive."
With the Ballers season in full swing, the Raimondi Park renovations are complete, with crowds immediately embracing their team’s new home.