By Dan Klepal
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Great American Ball Park will be open for business on Opening Day next year ... most of it, anyway.

The new, $330 million ballpark, actually will have two grand openings - one on March 31, the first day of the 2003 baseball season, and a second on Opening Day 2004.

A double dip is necessary because the western-most portions of the new ballpark - including the Reds' Hall of Fame, a sponsorship zone with games for kids, some concession stands, the Rose Garden tribute to Pete Rose and an undetermined restaurant - can't be built until Cinergy Field is out of the way. Demolition of the 33-year-old stadium will begin next week, as crews begin gutting the old stadium, but it still will be a pile of rubble next March until about mid-August.

All other aspects of the ballpark - the scoreboards, the playing field, most concession stands and restrooms, luxury boxes and party suites - will be completed in time for the entire 2003 season.

The second phase of construction represents about $15 million of the $280 million project and will be built around home games.

"About 93 percent of the ballpark will be complete," by the end of March, said project manager Arnie Rosenberg, of Parsons Brinckerhoff. "But fans will be able to circulate throughout the entire ballpark."

Construction crews are used to the schedule juggling. They've had to build the ballpark's superstructure in a very tight location - between U.S. Bank Arena, a major highway, the Ohio River and Cinergy Field. That has made planning, and the timely delivery of materials, supremely important as there is precious little space for storage.

Rosenberg said scheduling around home games at the new ballpark won't present a problem. And there will be temporary concession stands on the ballpark's west side, so fans won't be inconvenienced.

"They'll go away after that first season," Rosenberg said.

The Reds begin moving into their building, called the Reds Administration Building on the north side of the ballpark, next month. They take full possession of the building in November.

Fans will be able to stand on the west side of the stadium and watch the progress as the final pieces of the Great American Ball Park puzzle are put into place.

"There's a whole element of the new ballpark that won't be there, and there will be construction barricades blocking the southwest portion of Crosley Terrace to keep people from walking into excavation holes," said Mike Sieving, Hamilton County's construction executive. "But the ballpark will be fully functional. There just won't be those buildings on the west side, or any of the streetscaping."

In April, construction crews will begin pouring concrete pile caps, to support the buildings, into the ground. Concrete slabs then will be poured and, by fall, the skeleton of those buildings should be in place. All will be open for the start of the 2004 season, except the Hall of Fame. That's because there have been some design changes to the inside of the Hall of Fame, which have pushed back the construction schedule. It should be open by July 2004.

Sieving said the other big piece of the second grand opening is the opening of a newly configured Mehring Way, from Broadway to Main Street around the southern tip of the stadium. The new Main Street also will be in place by April 2004.