Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres, rises in front of you, widely regarded as one of the most beautiful ballparks in Major League Baseball. The stadium opened in April 2004 after years of political controversy, legal battles, and a public financing debate that dominated local politics through the late 1990s and early 2000s. The design team at HOK Sport, later Populous, made a crucial decision: rather than demolishing the historic Western Metal Supply Company building that sat in the left-field corner, they incorporated it into the stadium structure, attaching the ballpark to the 1909 brick warehouse and converting its rooftop into a seating area.
That single design choice gave Petco Park a sense of rootedness and history that many new stadiums lack. The park is also designed to frame views of the downtown skyline and, on clear days, the mountains to the east. From the upper deck on the third-base line, you can see the Pacific Ocean.
San Diego's baseball history stretches back to the Pacific Coast League Padres of the 1930s — Ted Williams played here before the Red Sox — but the Major League franchise has been defined by its perpetual search for its first World Series title, a quest that continued past its first half-century.