Upgrades to The Nat will start in off-season

Clubhouse, facility improvements part of MLB initiative

The Vancouver Canadians move toward a new-look Nat Bailey Stadium this winter.

The C's, according to team president Andy Dunn, are set to upgrade the current home clubhouse on the third-base side this off-season as part of complying with new facility standards brought into effect when Major League Baseball (MLB) revamped the minors ahead of the 2021 season.

The eventual plan is to have the C's clubhouse shift to the first-base side, where the current barbecue section sits. That new complex will also house batting cages, training rooms, dining areas and other amenities.

Dunn isn't divulging timelines or financial details. He wouldn't say whether the pending firstbase building would have seating for fans to make up for losing the BBQ area capacity. He did say that construction on the first-base side would “hopefully start after next season.”

“I'm not going to give you everything right now,” Dunn explained.

Baseball America reports that minor-league teams have a “relaxed set of standards” that they need to meet by April 2023 or face fines. They don't get into details about what those standards are, but they report that if they go up in 2024, teams are expected to be fully compliant in 2025 and that failure to do so by then “could result” in MLB pulling affiliation agreements.

The C's have been a Blue Jays farm team since 2011. They signed a 10-year extension with Toronto in February 2021, and are their high-A affiliate in the six-team Northwest League.

The Nat opened in 1951 under the Capilano Stadium banner.

The C's spearheaded a facelift of the ballpark ahead of the 2015 season, adding 900 seats via the addition of bleachers down the third-base line and beyond left field.

Financial details of the upgrade were never made public.

“With the designs we are looking at, it reminds me of what the (leftfield) porch did — it completes the ballpark,” Dunn said of these upcoming additions.

According to Baseball America, both home and visitor clubhouses in minor-league parks going forward must be 1,000 square feet or larger and have 32 lockers for players with lockable storage. The current visiting team clubhouse at The Nat would definitely fall short of that standard.

Also according to Baseball America, there's to be a private dressing, shower and toilet facility for female umpires and staff of home and visiting teams, as well as two covered tunnels for pitching/hitting that are protected from windblown rain, and home and visiting training rooms measuring 400 sq. ft each and featuring two full-body whirlpools.

Those would be destined for the pending first-base building, as would the dining areas. With MLB taking over greater control of player development, they want an enhanced focus on nutrition and require minor-league stadiums to have two rooms of 300 sq. ft or more that each feature a refrigerator, freezer, dishwasher and microwave.

There's more structure in scheduling in the minors now and teams are spending more time at a single ballpark each week.

With only a couple of exceptions all season, the C's played a six-game series against one team every Tuesday to Sunday. Monday was a travel day.

This was the C's first season back at The Nat after a two-year absence. Minor-league baseball was called off in its entirety in 2020 due to COVID -19, and the C's in 2021 were based in Hillsboro, Ore., sharing a ballpark with the rival Hillsboro Hops due to travel restrictions.

As part of the changes in the minors, Vancouver was bumped up from a short-season, single-A team that played a 76-game schedule starting in June to a high-A team playing a 132-game schedule that began in April.

The C's wound up this season with an announced attendance average of 5,135 at The Nat, which was down from the 6,210 they recorded in the last year of short-season, single-A in 2019, but up from the 3,833 on the books from 1999, which was the last time The Nat was home to full-season baseball with the triple-A Canadians.

“I thought it was a good year. Coming into it, we knew there was going to be some challenges,” Dunn said. “By the end of it, it felt the same as 2019 and that was amazing.

“You forget that there was apprehension and trepidation at the start of the year. We were all still wondering whether people were ready for full-crowd settings. It takes time to get people comfortable.”

The C's season came to an end earlier this month, getting swept in the best-of-five Northwest League championship series by the Eugene Emeralds, a San Francisco Giants affiliate.