For Nats' Home, a Rapid Ascent

And what will the finished product be called? Who will buy the naming the rights, and for how much?

So many unknowns.

Except for this: Bolt by bolt, beam by beam, the stadium is going up.

The ballpark's steel and concrete skeleton grows larger by the workday, rising in a once-forgotten pocket of the city about a mile south of the U.S. Capitol, beyond the view of commuters on most major routes in and out of the District. Allen Y. Lew, chief executive of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, which is overseeing the project, joked that some people might consider the massive building effort to be just a rumor.

"But as you can see," said Lew, standing atop a frigid, wind-swept bluff, looking down at the stadium's future left field, "it is real."

Below him, amid piles of building materials and a half-dozen towering cranes, workers were bundled against the cold, trudging on a rutted, frozen tundra of dirt and stones that eventually will be a lush expanse of outfield sod. In the distance, past a still-imaginary infield, past where home plate and the base lines will be next year, other workers labored on three levels of seating decks that make the project look like what it is: a big league stadium.

"Absolutely it'll be done on time," said Tony Robinson, spokesman for the sports commission. The ballpark is due to be ready for Opening Day a year from April. "It'll be done well before that," Robinson said. "They have to get the staff in there and get them trained."

In the District, which has no significant industrial heritage, ballpark designers eschewed the now-familiar retro look -- the red brick and ornate ironwork prevalent in stadiums built since the early 1990s in one-time factory cities such as Baltimore and Cleveland. The exterior of the Nationals' ballpark will feature glass and concrete made to resemble limestone and granite, in keeping with Washington's federal buildings and monuments.

Before the concrete-and-steel construction phase going on now, officials said, workers excavated nearly 341,000 cubic yards of soil at the site and drove about 2,400 pilings into the ground, each 55 feet deep, for the stadium's foundation. The mechanical-electrical-plumbing phase is set to begin soon, with workers installing about nine miles of pipes, 600,000 pounds of ducts and more than 3 million feet of power lines.

Workers are scheduled to finish enclosing the structure in the spring, officials said. The clubhouses (the visitors' locker room will be rectangular) are to be completed over the summer, and work will begin in August on the playing field and drainage system. The huge main scoreboard, not yet fully designed, is slated to go up in September.

In the fall and winter, officials said, workers will put finishing touches on the ballpark's restaurants, offices and premium seating areas, including 78 luxury suites.

The process is called "fast-track design." It is meant to save time. With an ordinary project -- an office building, for example -- architects would design every aspect of the structure before turning over the finished plans to contractors. But because the ballpark project is under a tight deadline, architects are turning over plans for each phase of the project as soon as the designs are ready, so the builders can keep busy.

Purnell's Washington architectural firm, Devrouax & Purnell, which is working on its first stadium project, is teamed with the Kansas City, Mo., firm of Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, or HOK, which has designed 10 of the 14 newest major league stadiums.

In the beginning, Purnell said, architects gave construction companies general plans for the project's major structural elements "so that everyone understood the concept." Then they turned over detailed plans for the first phase -- the pilings and foundation -- so contractors could get to work. Since then, he said, architects have completed designs for several more phases, including the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.

As workers continue with the concrete-and-steel phase, laboring outdoors in the winter freeze, architects are months ahead, Purnell said, focusing on details of the clubhouses that will be finished this summer, especially the Nationals' locker room, with its elaborate video-scouting system, physical fitness center and other amenities for the players.

"It's kind of fun to remember how these projects have evolved over the years," said Joe Spear, a principal designer for HOK who is working closely with Purnell's firm on the Washington ballpark. "I can remember when teams really didn't want to invest a lot of dough into making the clubhouse a great place for a player to spend time. But we've seen that change to where teams really want the players to be comfortable."

It helps performance, he said. And so does a sense of unity.

Thus the clubhouse in the round.

"You don't want a niche where two or three players can get off by themselves and create their own little world," Spear said. "You want them to feel they're part of a team."