Forget everything you have loved or loathed about the stadium you have known as Cinergy Field. Because if you have a ticket for Monday's Opening Day game — or any of the 80 home games that will follow it this spring and summer — that's not where you are going.

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Lush green grass, open air, new outfield fence are some of the changes to Cinergy Field.. (Glenn Hartong photo) 600 | 800 | 1024

        You are going somewhere entirely different.

        You're not going to a stadium. You're going to a ballpark.

        “Reds fans are going to experience something Monday they haven't experienced since before Riverfront Stadium opened 31 years ago,” said project manager Arnie Rosenberg. “An open ballpark.”

        Mr. Rosenberg led a news media tour of the transformed Cinergy Field on Monday, one week before the Reds' sold-out Opening Day.

        Since 1970, the 55,000-seat facility known first as Riverfront Stadium was a classic example of the circular, steel-and-concrete behemoths built in the late 1960s and early 1970s to accommodate both baseball and football on artificial turf.

        But with the beginnings of the Reds' new Great American Ball Park taking form next door and the Bengals removed several blocks to the west in Paul Brown Stadium, Cinergy is home to baseball, and baseball only.

Retired jerseys now hang on a facade in left field. | ZOOM |

The fence rises from 8 feet to 14 in the power alleys and to 40 feet (when it's finished) in center field. | ZOOM |

New cushioned seat on the yellow club level. | ZOOM |

        Immediately after last year's baseball season ended, the project management company, Parsons-Brinckerhoff, and contractor Hunt Construction began the job of taking a 14,000-seat bite out of Cinergy — from the left-field foul line to right-center field.

Workers paint the warning track. | ZOOM |

        And, with the Bengals gone, the Reds were free to do what they have wanted to do for years — rip up the AstroTurf playing surface that ravages players' knees and replace it with a carpet of natural bluegrass, much more forgiving to the players whose cleats will pound the surface.

        Taking the bite out of the eastern part of Cinergy required moving the entire playing field 11 feet closer to the stands and creating a new outfield wall that varies from 8 to 14 feet high, culminating in a 40-foot “Black Monster” in dead center field.

        There is work yet to do — a 10-foot addition to the center-field wall is not yet in place, a chain-link opening to allow umpires to see inside the bullpens behind the right field wall hasn't been installed, and the protective padding on the outfield walls remains to be hung.

        Construction officials say all will be done before Monday's game.

        The combination of an open-ended stadium, the smell of grass (even on a frigid day like Monday) and a field where the fans in the front row will be closer to home plate than the pitcher, will make for a brand-new baseball experience.

        It is an experience that won't last long. The Reds are scheduled to play in the refurbished Cinergy only two years before moving into the $280 million Great American Ball Park.

        But the Reds are convinced the fans — and the players — will enjoy it while it lasts.

        Declan Mullin, the Reds' stadium operations director, said the new Cinergy will get its first use Sunday, when the team has a workout.

        “From the players' standpoint, it's a whole new ballpark,” Mr. Mullin said. “Sunday's going to be fun, just to watch the players come out on the field and see the look on their faces.”

        The modifications at Cinergy Field cost $8.2 million. Total cost of demolition will be $4.6 million.

        Improving public access to Cinergy Field and the new ballpark will cost $2.1 million. Building a new parking garage to the east of the ballpark cost $15 million.

Cinergy Field makeover: Stadium becomes ballpark Griffey in doubt for Opening Day Knee no problem for Boone Dessens ready to go Game report: Royals 3, Reds 2

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