Baseball with a Skyline View

Main entrance to the Ballpark at St. George, Jul-2001.

Interior design: Somewhat standard, but with a steep pitch for good viewing.

The park offers a spectacular view of Upper New York Bay and the Manhattan skyline.

Chronological Tour: Stop 198

• Location: Richmond Terrace at the ferry landing, Staten Island, N.Y. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 2001 as Richmond County Bank Ballpark at St. George
• Additional names: Staten Island University Health Community Park (2022)
• Home team: Staten Island Yankees, New York-Penn League (2001-19); Staten Island Ferry Hawks, Atlantic League (2022-present)
• Capacity: 6,964

Rating: 3 baseballs

I really didn’t know what to expect from this place, but I was pleasantly surprised. Of course, it had sky boxes, but they were supported on beams extending from the edge of the concourse, as was the press box (so you didn’t have the ugly dark area on the concourse behind the plate). It was also a continuous seating area, with no walkway halfway down. I’m thinking Altoona without the upper deck, or Lowell. Except that this place holds over 6900, thanks to an extensive right-field bleacher that will only get jammed on overflow nights, as that’s the field that gets the last sun.

And, as you might expect, the park has a beautiful view of the Kill van Kull, the Upper Bay, and – Bayonne. No, seriously, while the industrial area of Bayonne, N.J., is visible, and so is plenty of barge traffic to go along with the ferries, the pièce de résistance of this place is the view of lower Manhattan. And they don’t obstruct it. The outfield wall has no decks of advertising, although it is broken up by four video-type boards displaying the logo of that inning’s sponsor. There’s also a standard scoreboard, coupled with a video display. Of course, there are picnic areas and a kid’s area.

On a visit in August 2005, the outfield wall had been converted to a typical minor-league wall, with advertising all around. However, the view of the bay and the city was still unobstructed. By 2007, the entire wall had become a video display board, but still not obstructing the view. As of 2017, the wall in right field was an LED ribbon display, but the left field wall had traditional advertising.

I should mention that the outer brick is reminiscent of a building like the ferry terminal (which I didn’t look at for comparison). It’s orange or bright mud-colored, rather than red. Another thing that makes the park stand out is the seats themselves. They’re blue, for the Yankees, rather than the all-too-common forest green of modern parks.

In 2011, I lowered my rating for the ballpark from four baseballs to three. While the ballpark itself is still quite handsome, the club has raised ticket prices; the lowest price for a walk-up ticket, as of 2017, is now $14, which is actually down from $17 in 2012. In all fairness, the club does offer various deals that lower the price of multiple tickets to a reasonable amount, but that does not help the solo traveler. In addition, the experience feels quite sterile these days. They also installed a very unreliable scoreboard a few years back, though they replaced that in 2017 by incorporating the line score display into the video board, as has become common at many parks.

Despite assurances from the Yankees that Staten Island would be included in their plans when Major League Baseball undertook a restructuring of the minors in 2021, the big club opted to affiliate with the Hudson Valley Renegades instead. A new ownership group is starting a new team, the Ferry Hawks, in the MLB Partner independent Atlantic League for 2022.

The photos on this page were taken at a game 6-Jul-2001, before the devastating attack 11-Sep that destroyed the World Trade Center towers which stand out in the photo above. The park was used as a triage site for individuals injured in the tragedy. These casualties were ferried from the Battery to the ballpark in the hours after the incident. As a result, “Harbor Heroes” was in the running for the name of the independent team before “Ferry Hawks” prevailed.

In addition, with the naming rights to the ballpark having expired after two decades, the new owners entered into an agreement with Staten Island University Health to brand the facility as SIUH Community Park starting in 2022. Reportedly, this is an effort to attract more fans from all over Staten Island rather than confining it to the St. George area, where the ferry landing and county courthouse are located.