The 42,060 seats in Great American Ball Park will be the same color as the team on the field.

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Computer renderings of the ballpark with red seats. 600 | 800 | 1024

        Cincinnati Reds' officials changed the seat color from a “forest green” to the team's namesake after Chief Operating Officer John Allen saw computer renderings of the ballpark with different seat colors.

        Mr. Allen said he was struck by the red seats against the backdrop of the white steel superstructure.

        “Green is fairly common in new stadiums, and we had that as a placeholder,” Mr. Allen said. “Then we did a mock-up of the ballpark and tried different colored seats. The red really made the ballpark stand out. It's a nice look.”

        Crews will begin the $4.1 million job of installing seats this summer. The process starts with drilling 84,120 holes into the seating bowls of the stadium, which should take two months. The holes will eventually hold the seat posts, which will then hold the seats. Each seat will have a cup holder.

Standard 19-inch seat. | ZOOM |

Wider, padded seats for luxury boxes and diamond club. | ZOOM |

        “It's a lot of holes,” said Eric Schreiner, construction manager for Hunt Construction Group, which is building the ballpark. “It'll take us until early January to get all the seats in.”

        Clark Mleynek, project architect for HOK Sport, said his firm has a computer model that creates realistic views of everything in the park, from color and texture patterns to what it will look like after five years of wear and tear.

        The majority of the seats will be 19 inches wide and have a team logo on the red metal poles that support them.

        Seats in more expensive sections, such as luxury boxes and the “diamond club,” will be wider and padded.

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