Knights Stadium - Home of the Charlotte Knights

Official Review by David Berger, Stadium Journey Special Correspondent

Knights Stadium is a study in contrasts - unrealized potential, broken promises and opposing forces that keep the stadium from being the best it can be. Ownership and Charlotte leaders want to move the Knights to Charlotte's Center City, but have faced continuous opposition from a lawyer who also owns some competing property. While the Knights are expected to move into a new facility no later than 2014, reports as of October 11, 2011, say that a sixth lawsuit to prevent the move may be soon forthcoming. The stadium is just 21 years old and is in very good shape, but this region has changed so much in the last 20 years that Knights Stadium just doesn't meet the vision of the future.

Food & Beverage    3

There are a tremendous number of concession stands throughout the park, but for the most part they all serve standard fare. Because the Knights do not use a professional concession staff, instead offering local charities the opportunity to man the stations, food tends to be a little stale at the generic concessions, as it is prepared well in advance.

The Home Plate Cafe is a restaurant bar on the 2nd level that offers a great alternative. If you want dinner beforehand, they offer a fixed-price buffet. In the offseason, they rent the space out for private parties and it has a beautiful panoramic view of the ballpark.

Atmosphere    1

Part of getting yourself a new stadium involves telling the ticket-buying public how awful your existing facility is, and why you need a shiny new park. The public has bought into the rhetoric and are staying away in droves. Charlotte averaged 4,100 fans a game in 2011, and have been towards the bottom in attendance for the last 5 years, never exceeding a 4,800 per-game average. In a park that was built to eventually host Major League Baseball, it tends to feel cavernously empty.

Typical attendance breaks down into a few groups. Summer camps, organizations doing a "Knight at the Knights", families, and then fans. You have your usual autograph seekers and fans of the opposition clustered down beyond the dugouts, but for the most part, a night at the ballgame breaks up the monotony of another movie night.

The Knights are also not investing a lot in atmosphere. The oversized concourse is stark and empty, with very little decoration harkening back to better days of minor league ball, when the Charlotte O's had Cal Ripken Jr, or when the Knights were a Cleveland club and had Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, and Sandy Alomar, Jr.

An interesting note: the multicolored seat design was developed by Alexander Julian, who also designed the original Charlotte Hornets teal pinstripe uniforms. It's supposed to look like one of his signature sweater designs. While Mr. Julian may have been a celebrated designer native to North Carolina in 1990, at this point it just looks like broken seats were replaced by whatever they could find.

Down the left field line, they have a picnic area for group outings as well as a beer garden and some of their better grill choices. Down the right field line, you'll find the "fun zone" for the kids, including a carousel and a mini-golf course.

Neighborhood    1

The major complaint: the Charlotte Knights don't play in Charlotte. In fact, they aren't even in North Carolina. They're just over the border in Fort Mill, South Carolina. When the park was built, there were promises of eventually expanding it to a major league park, so it's surrounded by a sea of parking. As part of the sweetheart lease deal, the original owners were supposed to build the area into a multi-use facility "" a live/work/play environment. Nothing was built for more than 15 years before they finally added a concrete box they called the Hornets Training facility (since abandoned by the Bobcats). In the last few years, some more corporate buildings have sprung up, but the ballpark still sits alone, at the end of a long entrance, with no discernible neighborhood.

Fans    3

Fans are pleasant enough "" there's just not enough of them. The different archetypes mentioned earlier delineate themselves seating-wise, so it's easy to find the right group to sit with. Diehards up close and down the lines, families behind the home plate screen in general admission, and kids over the dugouts.

Access    3

Knights Stadium is easy to get to, as the entrance is less than a mile off Exit 88 on Interstate 77. Getting out can be more of a hassle. In the last few years, they've been able to create a second exit, but it generally creates more confusion, and it can be really hard to get out of the parking lot, even with just a few thousand cars. There are no public transportation options.

Return on Investment    3

Being a AAA park, it's not necessarily cheap to get in "" as the best tickets are at least $14 "" but there are plenty of less expensive options. Food prices are typical as well, and there is an unavoidable parking charge. In the last few years, they have begun to encourage tailgaters, which can help defray some costs once you're inside the ballpark.

Extras    2

They've done all but put the moving boxes out in the concourse. The oversized stadium feels desolate at times, and will limp along until they get the downtown park settled. As a diehard minor league fan, it pains me to say that one of their best extras is Homer the Dragon. There's a tradition here of high quality mascot performances.

The original Homer went on to create Dinger the Dinosaur for the Colorado Rockies, and his routines are still fan favorites for adults and kids alike. They do a nice Thirsty Thursday promotion keeping drink prices down, and they host some of the best fireworks in the Southeast on Friday nights. Fourth of July is still a sellout night, no matter how bad the rest of the year might be.

Final Thoughts

Knights Stadium has seen better days. I've been going to this park for the last 19 years, and can remember better teams and better crowds. There was even an optimism that Major League Baseball was on the horizon. I don't think anyone truly feels that way anymore, and the in-between status the last few years has really taken a toll. For many Charlotteans, Kannapolis or Hickory may be more convenient, and with Single-A pricing, also more affordable. Beautiful new parks in downtown Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Greenville, SC, sparked renewed interest in baseball in those areas, and either created or joined flourishing neighborhoods. I hope the same will be true for Charlotte in the future.



David Berger is curator of TicketToTheGame.com.