SkyDome

Walking up to Rogers Centre, Jul-2010.

From high above home plate, a look at the entire field and the retractable roof.

A top-down view of the ballpark, from CN Tower, Aug-1992.

Chronological Tour: Stop 48

• Location: Bremner Boulevard at Spadina Avenue (off Gardiner Expressway), Toronto, Ont. (map it using Google Maps)
• Opened: 1989 as SkyDome
• Additional names: Rogers Centre (2005)
• Home team: Toronto Blue Jays, American League (1989-present); Toronto Argonauts, Canadian Football League (1989-2015)
• Capacity: 50,516

Rating: 3 baseballs

In 1989, a new stadium arose next to the CN Tower, and the Blue Jays took up residence in midseason. The stadium was the first with a new kind of retractable dome, one that could slide out and enclose the stadium from an origin in center field within about 20 minutes.

The park is known as much for its amenities as for its sightlines. Center field features the SkyDome Hotel, in which game spectators have often observed guests “in action”, as well as a Hard Rock Cafe. McDonald’s was also a supplier of concessions through 1999.

I’ve enjoyed SkyDome on my trips to the park; every time through 2018, I’ve been lucky to experience the place with the dome wide open on a cool, brisk afternoon or, in 2018, a cool, brisk evening. I finally got a roof-closed game on my visit for the last home game of the 2022 regular season, a chilly, breezy October afternoon. The park does lose points for the busy center field as well as the artificial turf, but the fan base makes up for it.

The Canadian Football League’s Argonauts played here for a quarter-century, as did the NBA’s Raptors for a few seasons until the Air Canada Centre opened three blocks away in 1999.

With Rogers Communications buying the Blue Jays in 2004, the club changed the name of the stadium to the Rogers Centre in February 2005. For a few years, Torontonians continued to refer to the park as SkyDome, but the new name eventually stuck.

By 2018, while the grass areas remained with artificial turf, the entire infield was dirt, not just the areas near each base as seen in the 2010 photo above.

For 2020 and the first four months of 2021, the Blue Jays were unable to utilize Rogers Centre for games due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. Most of their games during those seasons were played in Buffalo, N.Y., although they opened the 2021 season at their spring training home in Dunedin, Fla. The Jays finally returned home for a series the last weekend of July 2021.

The Blue Jays announced in late 2022 that they were embarking on a two-year renovation of the venue. Work began as soon as the Blue Jays were eliminated from the 2022 playoffs, and about half the work is due to be done by opening day 2023, with the rest finished by opening day 2024.