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.”
