Target Field renovations for 2018 unveiled

The Twins quietly announced plans last fall to renovate parts of Target Field over the offseason. It was so quietly announced you probably didn’t even hear about it, but I did. They said they were going to change the Metropolitan Club and concourses in right field, but other than that, not much detail was given.

Being the keen investigative journalist that I am, I went down to Target Field back on October 31st to see if I could figure out what was going on. What I found was...

Maija Varda

Maija Varda

...some kind of renovation involving the Metropolitan Club and the Right Field concourse indeed going on.

However, the mystery is now over! The Twins filled in the rest of the world today on their plans.

The biggest change happening is that the Metropolitan Club — the big glass area in right field reserved exclusively for season ticket holders — will be no more. Instead, it will be replaced by a new club called Bat & Barrel, and will be open to all ticket holders. It’ll have bar, table, and lounge seating, a bunch of TVs, alcohol, new food, and all the other things you’d expect the Twins to put in there. More unexpectedly, the club will also be the home for various team awards, including both World Series Championship trophies! Woo! Unfortunately, the team didn’t say whether these would be the real World Series trophies, or replicas like the ones they already display in the Champions Club behind home plate (the real trophies are kept in the team offices).

Another big change: parts of the glass of the club will now be opening windows, kinda like those ones at U.S. Bank Stadium.

As far as the concourses go, the team is widening them on the ground level around the right field foul pole to help eliminate traffic jams. New elevators and escalators will also be added around there to facilitate fans getting into the new club.

Personally, I think these changes are a great idea. The Metropolitan Club was pretty packed when the stadium first opened, but after eliminating the buffets and losing a lot of season ticket holders after fielding a crappy team for years, it’s seen a lot less traffic. And, have you ever been in the Metropolitan Club? That’s an awful big space to leave empty most of the time. Now the Twins can make use of that area by opening it to more fans and selling more food and beverages to them. They did a similar thing a few years ago when they turned a little-traveled area in center field into a new bar and a club called Catch.

A part of me will miss the Metropolitan Club. They had some cool history there, and it was a fun place to escape inclement weather, but I don’t even have season tickets anymore. Why should I care? I know some season ticket holders won’t be happy about missing their exclusive little area, but the Twins could easily solve that problem by rebuilding the entire Metrodome nearby and opening the Rally Room to those people during games. The view of Target Field from there will be just as good as the view of the Metrodome field was from the original Rally Room.

The Twins expect to complete the renovations sometime mid-March. The area won’t be open for Twins Fest like it normally is because at the moment it looks like this: