Why Centerfield Plaza matters.
Centerfield Plaza at Dodger Stadium is a sweeping public concourse where Elysian Park's hillside setting meets midcentury baseball architecture, Dodger history and a new principal entrance built behind the outfield.
Set beyond center field between the Left and Right Field Pavilions and just below the stadium's terraced parking levels, the plaza occupies a two-and-a-half-acre threshold at the lowest elevation of the Chavez Ravine ballpark. Open-air gathering areas extend laterally between the pavilions, with low structures, shaded terraces and landscaped edges preserving sightlines toward the stadium bowl and surrounding hills. New escalators, elevators and pedestrian bridges connect the outfield level with higher concourses, allowing circulation around the stadium perimeter from a location once separated from much of the building. Oversized Dodger objects and outdoor installations turn the concourse into a visual archive, placing franchise history within the principal approach to the seating bowl. The result is a broad civic-scale entrance whose open concourse, hillside position, vertical connections and baseball artifacts give Dodger Stadium a public front door without obscuring the 1962 building behind it.
What defines Centerfield Plaza.
Centerfield Plaza at Dodger Stadium is best known for completing a $100 million renovation that fundamentally changed circulation around the stadium under the direction of Dodgers planning executive Janet Marie Smith. Smith joined the Dodgers in 2012 after major ballpark work that included Oriole Park at Camden Yards and Turner Field, then oversaw successive improvements intended to preserve Dodger Stadium's midcentury character as the building aged. The club announced the center-field undertaking in July 2019, pairing the new plaza with major renovations to both outfield pavilions and targeting completion for the following season. DAIQ Architects and Levin & Associates formed part of the architectural collaboration, Studio MLA handled landscape architecture, and Smith led the strategic design work through the Dodgers Planning & Development operation. PCL Construction joined the broader project team, alongside engineering and environmental-design specialists assembled for the stadium program. Construction proceeded through a single offseason, extending a redevelopment approach in which major interventions were executed without displacing the Dodgers from their home field. The completed work preserved the ballpark's established seating capacity and its distinctive pastel seating palette, hexagonal forms and open relationship with the surrounding landscape. Pandemic restrictions prevented spectators from encountering the finished project during the 2020 championship season, leaving its public debut until fans returned in 2021. Smith subsequently characterized Centerfield Plaza as Dodger Stadium's first true front door, a role that shifted the principal arrival sequence toward an area historically treated as the back of the ballpark.
Franchise commemoration supplies the plaza with a second factual thread, turning its public areas into an expanding collection devoted to Dodger players, championships and popular culture. Branly Cadet's bronze Jackie Robinson sculpture arrived at Dodger Stadium in 2017 as the first statue in stadium history, depicting Robinson sliding into home during his 1947 rookie season; the 800-pound work was subsequently relocated from the Left Field Reserve area to Centerfield Plaza. Cadet created a companion sculpture of Sandy Koufax, unveiled in 2022 with the pitcher captured in his famous leg kick and positioned beside Robinson, his former Brooklyn teammate. Giant replica trophies now commemorate the Dodgers' 2024 and 2025 World Series championships, the first consecutive titles in franchise history, and an oversized Fernando Valenzuela bobblehead debuted in the plaza in 2026. Valenzuela's installation extends a commemorative program that already includes a large Tommy Lasorda bobblehead and other baseball objects distributed across the outfield entrance. The plaza functions as an accumulating public archive, with Cadet's bronzes anchoring a collection that continues to change as new players and championships enter Dodger history.
How Centerfield Plaza fits.
Centerfield Plaza at Dodger Stadium works as the anchor for a stadium circuit connecting the Dodgers' relationship with Japanese baseball, the franchise's highest institutional honors and the broadcasting career inseparable from its move west.
Begin at Japanese Stone Lantern on the Top Deck, an eight-foot, 3,921-pound Kasuga-style monument commissioned by Japanese sportswriter Sotaro Suzuki. Suzuki had worked with Walter O'Malley during the Brooklyn Dodgers' 1956 goodwill tour of Japan and later attended Dodger Stadium's 1962 opening festivities with his wife, Toku. He commissioned Shimizugumi Stone Works Company in Okazaki City to carve the lantern, which crossed the Pacific in six sections during the winter of 1965 and originally stood within a Japanese garden beyond right field. The Dodgers moved it to a prominent Top Deck position in March 2024, bringing a physical artifact of the franchise's decades-long relationship with Japanese baseball into direct public view. Continue to Ring of Honor Pylons along the Right Field Pavilion ramp, where the franchise commemorates its retired numbers alongside figures whose contributions fall outside the uniformed roster. The honored players and managers span Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Jim Gilliam, Walter Alston, Sandy Koufax, Fernando Valenzuela, Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson and Don Drysdale, with broadcaster Vin Scully entering the Ring of Honor in 2017 and Jaime Jarrín following in 2018. Walter O'Malley joined in 2024, represented at the ceremony by his son Peter, placing the owner who transferred the Dodgers from Brooklyn and privately financed their Los Angeles home among the institution's formally honored figures. Conclude at Vin Scully Press Box, renamed for the broadcaster in 2001 during a career that eventually encompassed 67 seasons with the Dodgers. Scully joined Red Barber and Connie Desmond in the Brooklyn broadcast booth in 1950, became the club's principal announcer after Barber's departure and moved west with the team in 1958, making his voice part of the franchise's transition from Ebbets Field to Los Angeles. His career continued through the 2016 season, spanning the entire history of Dodger Stadium to that point and encompassing championships, perfect games and generations of Southern California baseball. After Scully's death in 2022, the Dodgers displayed the “I'll Miss You” banner from his final Dodger Stadium game behind the press box bearing his name. The progression moves from Suzuki's physical symbol of baseball exchange across the Pacific through the franchise's formal pantheon and culminates at the booth associated with the broadcaster who accompanied the Dodgers from Brooklyn into nearly six decades at Chavez Ravine.
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