War On the Rooftops

It seems like a lot of my favorite teams have interesting quirks that make them unique compared to any other franchise in sports. For Green Bay, it's the fact that they're publicly owned. More relevantly, for the Cubs, it's that they're a team with neighborhood ballpark and a tough contract with some of the neighbors.

Last week, Cubs owner Tom Ricketts decided that he'd had enough shenanigans with the city and the neighborhood, and decided to file his proposal for the much-needed renovations of Wrigley Field. Problem is, he opted to file the original plans for the ballpark, involving the jumbotron and ad signage for the outfield. And as anyone who's been paying attention knows, this means the owners of the rooftops on Waveland and Sheffield are going to fight.

I've never been to a game on one of the rooftops, and sure, it provides a unique experience and adds something different to the area around the park that others don't have. And up until 2004, the rooftops admitted people and paid nothing to the Cubs for the rights to the view. Finally the old administration decided to allow the rooftops to operate without any blockages to views in exchange for 17 percent of their revenue. At the time, I didn't really have much of an opinion one way or the other, other than noting that proposed "wind screens" to obstruct their view was a stupid idea, and thankfully that didn't pass. But it didn't really hurt the Cubs. At least, not until talk of renovation and modernization came up.

Today, I saw some proposed plans for how the ballpark would look after the renovation. I'm not super crazy about some of the signs there (the green Cubs logos are just kind of meh), but the jumbotron ideas look good. It's something I think the ballpark needs to get to the 21st century. I saw someone on Twitter who laughed about one fact with the signs though: all of the rooftop views are now to some degree obstructed. It's like the ultimate middle finger to the people that have held up the renovation plans.

It's all but a certainty that the rooftop owners will sue over this for a breach of contract. They may have a case, as the deal runs through 2023. But Comcast SportsNet's David Kaplan got to see the contract, and the case comes down to one provision.

"6.6: The Cubs shall not erect windscreens or other barriers to obstruct the views of the Rooftops, provided however that temporary items such as banners, flags and decorations for special occasions, shall not be considered as having been erected to obstruct views of the Rooftops. Any expansion of Wrigley Field approved by governmental authorities shall not be a violation of this agreement, including this section."

Would you consider this project an expansion of Wrigley? Since it's not just advertising but also a video screen that can be used for in-game purposes, I think it would be. And if a judge agrees, there go the rooftops.

I had no problem with them for years, even though until 2004, it could have been argued that they were thieves. Even with the deal, I didn't really have anything against them. It wasn't until they meddled in the affairs of ballpark renovations that I had issues. The Cubs are a Major League Baseball club that has the right to fix up its home park as it pleases, with approval of the city of Chicago. No other Major League team has to bow to the pressure of neighbors over what they can and can't do to their ballpark. And the Cubs shouldn't have to either. I understand that the rooftops are businesses and they're trying to protect their "product", but their "product" involves someone else's business, and they don't have the right to dictate terms like that to a sports franchise. Call me vindictive if you will, but I hope they get shafted. Wrigley has needed fixing up. This will finally put an end to the interference of allowing that to happen.