Rate Field

Rate Field (formerly Comiskey Park II, U.S. Cellular Field, and Guaranteed Rate Field) is a baseball stadium on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It is the home ballpark of the Chicago White Sox, one of the city's two Major League Baseball teams, and is owned by the state of Illinois through the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority. Built for US$137 million, the park opened as Comiskey Park on April 18, 1991, taking its name from the original Comiskey Park, the team's home since 1910.

Rate Field sits just west of the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago's Armour Square neighborhood, next to the more famous neighborhood of Bridgeport. The stadium was built across 35th Street from the original Comiskey Park, which was demolished to make room for a parking lot. The location of Old Comiskey's home plate is indicated by a marble plaque on the sidewalk next to Rate Field, with the foul lines painted in the parking lot. The east-northeasterly spectator ramp across 35th Street was designed to echo the contour of the old first-base grandstand.

The stadium was the first major sporting facility built in Chicago since Chicago Stadium in 1929. It was the last MLB park built before the wave of new "retro-classic" ballparks in the 1990s and 2000s.

A few design features from the old Comiskey Park were retained. The front facade of the park has arched windows. The "exploding scoreboard" pays homage to the original, installed by Bill Veeck at the old park in 1960. The original field dimensions and seating configuration were similar to those of Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City, which had been the previous baseball-only park built in the majors, in 1973.

Opened on April 18, 1991, the park was initially criticized by many fans because of the height of the upper deck. The original architect, HOK Sport (now Populous), sought to eliminate the overhang problems present in many stadiums built since the 1970s. With this in mind, the upper deck was set back over the lower deck, and the stands rose fairly gradually. While it gave nearly every seat in the upper level an unobstructed view of the field, it also created one of the highest upper decks in baseball. The first row of seats in the upper deck of the new stadium is as far from the field as the old stadium's highest row of seats. Fans sitting in this area did not get much chance for relief, as it was one of the few parks in Major League Baseball that did not allow fans sitting in the upper deck to venture anywhere else in the park, such as the lower deck concourse. As well, the upper deck made the park look like a cookie-cutter stadium from the outside.

Since 2001, the team has altered the stadium in response to fan complaints: it added a multi-tiered concourse beyond center field, adjusted the fences to make the outfield less symmetrical, and most significantly, removed 6,600 seats at the top of the upper deck.

The uppermost tier of the park now has a white-and-black screen behind the top row of seats, and is topped by a flat canopy roof supported by black steel-truss supports that obstruct the view of a few seats. The original blue seats were also replaced by forest green seats. The new green-and-black color scheme, upper-level screen set back from the outer wall and canopy roof are reminiscent of the old Comiskey Park and other classic baseball stadiums. Murals were also added to the interior concourses, a prominent feature of the old stadium.

The stadium has 103 luxury suites on two levels; the desire for these lucrative suites was one reason old Comiskey Park was replaced. It has 1,822 "club seats" on the 300-level mezzanine between the lower deck and upper deck. Patrons in the club seats are served by wait-staff, and may visit an enclosed concourse with television viewing areas and bar-style concessions.