A roof with a view: Rooftop seats are part of Wrigley Field's ambience and a $7 million business

Jim Manderschied's most recent baseball game at the Chicago Cubs' Wrigley Field cost him $80 and put him 400 feet from home plate, outside the park, on a drizzly, 50-degree Saturday afternoon in April.

The arrangement worked fine for Manderschied, who with 40 friends drove four hours from Cincinnati for baseball viewed from one of the three-story rooftops next to 88-year-old Wrigley Field.

"When you think of Wrigley, you think of the rooftops," said the 27-year-old Manderschied, whose group rented one across the street from left field for a game against his hometown Cincinnati Reds.

The 11 rooftops across from the Wrigley outfield, once only a quaint reminder of Chicago history, now generate $5 million to $7 million a year for the building owners. The businesses serve beer and food, and some have indoor lounges and bleachers of their own.

That's stoked the ire of the Tribune Co.-owned team, which is trying to keep up with rising player salaries and the newer stadiums of competitors. The Cubs' efforts to boost revenue, through a proposed $14 million stadium expansion that would obscure some of the rooftop views, have been stymied by a dispute with the neighbors of the second-oldest Major League Baseball stadium.

The Cubs decided to send a "message" to rooftop owners before the season, the team's vice president of business operations Mark McGuire said, and hung a green windscreen over the fence above Wrigley's outfield walls, partly blocking the view from the buildings along Waveland and Sheffield avenues.

"There's people stealing our product, making a lot of money off of us, and at the same time are preventing us from doing what we think is necessary and vital to Wrigley Field," McGuire said. "We had to become more aggressive."

Rooftop owners and neighborhood groups have fought the Cubs' expansion plans, which include adding 2,000 seats to the outfield bleachers and another 200 behind home plate. It would raise overall capacity by 5.6 percent from current seating of 39,111. They also bring the potential for excessive crowds and traffic during the Cubs' 81 home games each year, neighborhood groups say.

"The issue is the integrity of Wrigley Field and the quality of life around Wrigley Field," Gregg Kiriazes, president of Lake View Citizen's Council, one of the neighborhood groups. "Let's talk about protecting the neighborhood first, then talk about expansion."

Unlike many of the stadiums built in the suburbs with large parking lots and highway access, Wrigley Field is in a densely populated neighborhood of two-lane streets.

While the Cubs' expansion plan has stalled, that hasn't been the case for business on the rooftops. Parties over the past 20 years have gone from informal gatherings of building residents and friends to catered events of 50 to 150 people hosted by corporations for employees and clients.

Admission goes from $75 to $150 — four times what the team charges for the most expensive seat inside the park.

The 11 rooftops next to Wrigley Field — licensed by the city as entertainment establishments — can generate about $5 million in revenue a season, according to Jim Murphy, a rooftop owner and president of the Wrigley Field Rooftop Association.

McGuire puts it at close to $7 million — just under half the $15 million annual salary of the team's star player, outfielder Sammy Sosa.

Rooftop owners who spent $500,000 to $1 million on their buildings bristle at the notion they're stealing anything. Each rooftop owner pays about $50,000 a year in taxes to the city and spends more to meet safety codes, such as the $150,000 Mark Schlenker spent for an elevator to make his Waveland Avenue rooftop handicapped-accessible.

Schlenker said the buildings also buffer the rest of the neighborhood from crowds and noise during and after games, and indirectly help the Cubs promote the park.

"The rooftops have provided an ambiance that's unique to Chicago," Schlenker said. "Once people started going up on the roofs watching games, more and more people wanted to go up there. It creates an atmosphere."

While Wrigley Field frequently gets sellout crowds to see a team that hasn't won a World Series since 1908, the Cubs' ability to increase revenue is limited, said Dan Migala, editor of Team Marketing Report, a Chicago-based publisher of sports marketing information.

Wrigley Field has 60 luxury suites that lease for $75,000 to $100,000 a season, Migala said. Most newer stadiums have more, including Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox, which has 99 suites leased for $65,000 to $95,000, he said.

The Cubs also don't sell large billboard-style advertising inside the historic stadium that generates $5 million to $10 million a year in other parks, Migala said. The Cubs still were one of five of the 30 major-league teams to be profitable last season, making $2.9 million, according to Commissioner Bud Selig.

The windscreens didn't put a dent in the festivities for Manderschied and his friends from Cincinnati during their rooftop party in April. They drank beer and dined on hamburgers and sausages, included in the price of admission, as they watched the Reds defeat the Cubs 6-1.

M. SPENCER GREEN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cubs fans watch a game from a nearby rooftop. The team has hung dark screens to obscure the views of fans outside Wrigley Field.

Obviously, the screens have no effect on rooftop viewers.

The worst part about the rooftop seats are that you can still see the Cubs play baseball from there.

Maybe they should face the seats the other way.

Look at that stadium. It's chuck full of fans. Why is it chuck full of fans? We'll at least in part because of the charm of the rooftop buildings across the street. My wife and I visited Chicago about four years ago. We went out to the stadium and had a great afternoon. Wrigley is a diamond in the ruff. I harkens back to a time when baseball teams lasted for more than thirty seconds, and attendees wore suits an dresses instead of thongs and hawaiian shirts.

It's my feeling that the Cub organization could do more to promote their team, and make some handsome rewards. I'd probably watch a lot of the Cubs games if Cub management would sign a contract with Fox, UPN or some other group. Perhaps they should pursue this and other avenues before taking the neighbors to task.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.