KEYNOTE SPEAKER


JANET MARIE SMITH

Renowned urban planner and longtime baseball consultant, Janet Marie Smith is the Los Angeles Dodgers’ executive vice president of planning and development. She has overseen the large-scale improvement and expansion projects at Dodger Stadium and Campo Las Palmas (the club’s home in the Dominican Republic). From modernizing the stadium to incorporating the club’s rich history into the ballpark experience, Smith’s fan-friendly touches have helped keep Dodger Stadium as one of the premier venues in all of sports. She also oversaw the design and construction of Polar Park in Worcester, MA which is home of the Triple A Worcester Red Sox and just opened in Spring 2021.

Smith is best known in the baseball world for her work on the influential Oriole Park at Camden Yards, saving Fenway Park, and the renovations at Dodger Stadium. Opening in 1992, Camden Yards immediately became the standard-bearer for a new wave of traditional baseball parks that have been built in subsequent years. Smith played an instrumental role in the design of the ballpark, creating a state-of-the-art unique facility that blends with the urban context of downtown Baltimore while taking inspiration from baseball parks built in the early 20th century. Its success spawned over 20 MLB parks to move into urban centers and created a new formula for fan friendly areas in sports venues and establishing new thinking for how sports fit into cities and elevate design. 

Smith served as senior vice president of planning and development for the Boston Red Sox from 2002-2009 and oversaw the preservation of historic Fenway Park, leading the program that placed this ballpark on the National Historic Register. Her work at Fenway Park earned her a Special Achievement Award from the Boston Baseball Writers’ Association in 2012 and the Boston Preservation Alliance awarded the ballpark a Special Commendation for Outstanding Stewardship at the 2005 Preservation Awards, recognizing the cultural and historic significance of the building, as well as the honorific nature of its renovations including the popular addition of seats on top of Fenway Park’s iconic “Green Monster.”


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