Former Orioles president Larry Lucchino was a titan of the baseball industry, having been instrumental in the creation of Camden Yards and redefining ballparks across all levels of baseball.
Lucchino died on April 2 at the age of 78. Architect and urban planner Janet Marie Smith was brought in by the Orioles in 1989 to help bring to life Lucchino’s vision of a modern ballpark that still captured the nostalgic feel of baseball parks of the past.
Throughout her career, Smith has worked on dozens of assignments with Lucchino across the country, most recently the construction of a new stadium for the Triple-A Worcester Red Sox. Smith will always remember Lucchino as a man of both vision and passion.
“Having worked with him over the span of three decades, it is nice to reflect back on that first meeting with him and his stripes never changed. He was always tough. He was always challenging,” Smith said on Glenn Clark Radio April 5. “He knew where he wanted to take things and he was one of those rare people who both had vision and the tenacity and skill set to map out a path to make it happen. I don’t use that word vision lightly, either. He really did have a vision.”
If Lucchino was the man with the vision, it was Smith’s job to turn that vision into reality. That was no easy task. Lucchino wanted this new ballpark to capture strong emotions, like the original Forbes Field in Lucchino’s native Pittsburgh, but he also wanted the park to draw crowds that rivaled legendary yet smaller ballparks like Boston’s Fenway Park or Chicago’s Wrigley Field.
Lucchino wanted fans to visit the park and love the park. Those were the two points that Smith emphasized when trying to bring Lucchino’s dream to life.
“Much of my job was to map out, starting with the planning and down to the graphics, how do you make that come alive?” Smith explained. “How do you make it real and translate that in a way that we would have a credible seat at the table in working with the Maryland Stadium Authority and with HOK Sport, now known as Populous?”
Smith loved Lucchino’s conviction but also admired his willingness to hear other opinions as well. As open as Lucchino was to hearing new ideas, he never wavered on what he felt was most important. That was Lucchino’s way of assessing the credibility of certain ideas and testing out his own ideas even if he seemed combative, according to Smith.
“He didn’t want he didn’t want to be surrounded by yes people,” Smith said. “He didn’t want to be surrounded by head-scratching people. He enjoyed the intellectual challenge.”
Smith believes those challenges defined her relationship with Lucchino. While Lucchino was a sportsman through and through, Smith came from a different world — the world of urban planning. Smith believes Lucchino always enjoyed her outside perspective. He questioned her relentlessly because he wanted her to strongly convey her perspective to those not accustomed to it.
“His feeling was, ‘Look, I’ve got the sports experts already in the room. How do I convey to them that this is more than just baseball? It’s more than just a building to host a sport,'” Smith said. “One always feels flattered and honored when you’re asked to do something, but I understood that he expected me to challenge the norm, that he was giving me the permission to do that. That defines our relationship.”
As Smith reflected on Lucchino’s life and legacy, she also believes that there is room for greater development of Lucchino’s legacy. Smith believes, given her work with Lucchino on San Diego’s Petco Park, that if the Orioles’ new ownership group wanted to further Lucchino’s legacy, it could work with the city of Baltimore to help build up the area surrounding Camden Yards.
Lucchino envisioned that long ago, but it never came to fruition.
“The work he did with the Padres in San Diego is so notable for what it did for downtown San Diego and that project is another one I worked on with Larry,” Smith said. “What’s interesting there is that the city of San Diego gave the Padres not only the rights but the responsibility and obligation to develop that property. When you go to Petco Park today, the energy around it is just amazing and yet that was created by the ballclub. What I think is so impressive about it, if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know. It feels like a natural extension of the city and I hope for the same for Baltimore.”
Just how far Lucchino’s legacy is extended remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain in Smith’s eyes. While Lucchino was a man of great passion and vision, he was also a man of great business acumen. Everything he did, he did logically. His passion and conviction may have bothered some, but regardless of where he was — Baltimore, Boston, or San Diego — Lucchino always was a logical man and worked to bring his dreams into reality in the most doable way possible.
“Larry’s business mind was super keen. These weren’t obviously just sentimental decisions.” Smith said. “There was a reality that he was always pushing for the possible and not the impossible.”
For more from Smith, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Janet Marie Smith