While it may have seemed like a long offseason for baseball fans, it went quickly for members of the area building trades, who recently completed the first of two phases of upgrades at Progressive Field in downtown Cleveland.

The Cleveland Guardians returned home on April 8 following a 10-game road trip that began in Oakland and then took them to Seattle and Minnesota to start the season. Playing in front of the ballpark’s 31st consecutive sellout since the park opened, Cleveland beat the Chicago White Sox 4-0.

Besides celebrating the win, the fans who packed the ballpark got their first in-person glimpse of the work performed over the winter by affiliated members of the Cleveland Building Trades.

The home opener allowed the team to showcase the first three projects completed as part of a multi-phase plan to transform and upgrade the 10th oldest Major League Baseball stadium, which many fans still affectionately call “The Jake.”

Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council Executive Secretary/Business Manager Dave Wondolowski said Phases I and II will combine to create about 600 construction jobs. He estimated that half to two-thirds of those jobs were created during Phase I.

The combined price tag for both phases is expected to be just over $200 million.

From the time the project was conceived, the team wanted to respect the beloved original design of the ballpark.

“One of the things we demanded is it has to look like it belongs,” Jim Folk, Guardians Vice President Ballpark Improvement, told mlb.com. “We need to respect Joe Spear’s original design theory. It can’t look like someone just started bolting pieces onto it. It can’t look like the Herkimer Battle Jitney [from the movie Mystery Men]. It had to look like a modern version of the original idea.”

“People are going to see our renovations this year and next year and still feel like they’re at Progressive Field, but better and different,” Neil Weiss, Guardians Chief Information Officerand Executive Vice President of Civic Relations, said to mlb.com. “They’re not going to go in and say, ‘This feels like a totally different place.’ They’re going to say, ‘This feels like the same place but cooler.’”

The work performed during the five-month offseason was done under a Community Benefits Agreement. It included new social areas in the upper deck, as well as a new building on E. 9th Street.

The upper right field deck will be known as the Pennant District. Crews removed the “cargo containers” and replaced them with a new, open-air group outing area. It can accommodate a large group (up to 1,200 people) or be divided into three smaller spaces to host more intimate events.

The upper deck adjacent to left field is now called the Terrace District. Seats were removed and replaced with a rooftop patio. The Terrace Garden patio will feature spaces for fans to gather and watch the game while they enjoy food and drinks from new concession stands. A new beer hall, called the Terrace Hall, was also built. It will have a “distinct Cleveland vibe” and serve a wide selection of craft brews.

Just outside the ballpark, a new building was constructed on E. 9th Street that will serve as the new main kitchen and commissary for Progressive Field. It will support food and beveragesacross all outdoor seating sections at Progressive Field. Additionally, it features new storage areas.

Perhaps the most notable change will be the seats themselves, which are reaching the end of their lifespan (25 to 30 years). Crews replaced about 9,000 of the dark green seats in the bottom bowl with new navy-blue seats.

Most of the removed seats were broken or beyond repair. However, those that were still in working condition were used throughout the ballpark to replace other broken seats.

In order to complete the work on time, tradesmen and tradeswomen had to work quickly and efficiently.

“Only our members could achieve what they have in this time frame,” said Wondolowski. “Our training and expertise provide for the productivity and efficiency that we’ve seen here.”

Not only was the work finished on time, but it was performed with a high level of craftsmanship.

Wondolowski noted that this is due to the pride affiliated members take when they work on this type of iconic project.

“This stadium is visited by tens of thousands of people for each event that takes place there,” he said. “So, there are a lot of eyes on the quality work that will be completed.”

Work on Phase II will begin when Cleveland plays its final home game of the 2024 season.

Once crews get back to work, they will make more changes to improve fan experiences.

On the fan side, the Terrace Club in left field will be replaced with semi-private open-air loges, and the Dugout Suites behind home plate will be upgraded to include premium lounges.Additionally, crews will finish swapping out the old green seats with the new blue seats.

For both players and front office personnel, few, changes have been made since the ballpark was christened in 1994 as Jacobs Field. This will change as well in the offseason.

“Our baseball operations team has done a lot with a little for a very long time,” Weiss said. “I would challenge you to find a Power Five (college) school that has worse facilities for a baseball team than ours. I visited 40 different high-end Division I facilities that were all better than ours. We had to provide a better work environment for our players and staff.”

Tradesmen and tradeswomen will renovate both clubhouses, expand the strength-and-conditioning and athletic training areas, upgrade kitchen facilities and add robust technological support for players.

According to mlb.com, the expansion of the home side will lead to the visiting clubhouse being pushed farther down the right-field line.

Cleveland’s front office will benefit from the work, as well.

The office building will be renovated, and a fifth floor will be added to give those who work in the front office an additional 10,000 square feet of space.

Once all the renovation work is complete, the ballpark’s capacity is expected to remain around 34,830. During the historic 455-game sellout streak from 1995 to 2001, capacity increased to over 43,000. However, since then, the team has periodically removed seats.

As part of the CBA, the Guardians set supplier diversity goals for the project. As of early February, the team surpassed many of these goals including female-owned (8 percent goal, 30 percent committed), minority-owned (20 percent goal, 26 percent committed) and Hispanic-owned (3 percent goal, 5 percent committed). Halfway through the project, they are nearing two other goals: small business (18 percent goal, 17 percent committed) and veteran-owned (2 percent goal, less than 1 percent committed).

Built at a cost of $175 million in the early 1990s, the ballpark has undergone subtle changes over its 31-year history, including the addition of Heritage Park in 2007. However, the first major renovations took place during the winters of 2014 and 2015.

That renovation project was completed under a Project Labor Agreement. Building trades members created the Diamond Club behind home plate, expanded concession stands, built “The Corner” in right field, added a kid’s clubhouse, replaced some seats with drinking rails, added the “shipping containers” in the right field upper deck, moved the bullpens and installed new scoreboards.

Now roughly a decade later, union construction crews are preparing the ballpark for the next 22 years of baseball at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario