West Coast Turf greens Padres
PETCO Park stadium goes with
Riverside County grass to build its field

By Tim O'Leary THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE

A Riverside County company added some green Wednesday to San Diego's nearly $450 million baseball stadium and downtown face lift.

Shortly after daybreak, the first of about a dozen tractor-trailers began hauling turf into PETCO Park, a massive concrete and steel structure that anchors a once-crumbling chunk of downtown San Diego.

Seven TV cameras filmed from the outfield as West Coast Turf -- which has operations in Palm Desert, Winchester and other locations in California, as well as in Nevada and Arizona -- arrived and started rolling out the green.

The company has built a reputation providing groundcover for major stadiums and privately boasts that its fuzzy presence often turns foundering teams into first-place finishers.

That was good news for Erik Judson, the team's vice president of ballpark development.

"I like the sound of that," said Judson, whose Padres have the worst record in the National League this year and have an average attendance of 25,000 per game.

The installation of a hybrid grass called Bull's Eye Bermuda over the next two to three days is a key milestone in the construction of the park, which is set to open in April and is nearly 80 percent complete.

"It's one of the monumental days of this playing field," Judson said. "People are starting to feel the buzz."

Padres officials say they picked Bull's Eye because of its deep, vibrant color, its durability and its tolerance for shade. The same variety is used by the Anaheim Angels and Arizona Diamondbacks. The Padres purchased about 100,000 square feet, or approximately 2 1/2 acres, of grass that West Coast Turf grows in Palm Desert.

While that may seem like a lot of layered green and brown, it is just a sliver of the 3,000 acres that the company has in production, said Danielle Marman, director of sales and marketing for West Coast Turf. "We've got plenty," she said.

The company's customer list includes the San Francisco 49ers, the USC Trojans, Arizona State University, the Rose Bowl, the Los Angeles Coliseum, Dodger Stadium, the Oakland Coliseum and Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, where the Padres currently play.

West Coast Turf also has provided turf for three World Series matchups and five Super Bowls, according to company materials.

While Qualcomm is larger and has more seats than PETCO, team officials say the new stadium will be more up close and personal for fans. It also willboost the city's economy, preserve several deteriorating historic buildings and lure more baseball fans from Temecula, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore, Corona and other communities along the Interstate 15 corridor, officials said.

For years, the Padres have been strengthening their ties to southwest Riverside County, where about 30,000 workers drive south over the county line to reach their jobs. That's about a 400 percent increase since 1990, according to a commuter survey done last year.

In 1999, the Padres paid more than $60,000 to refurbish two Little League fields in Temecula's Rancho California Sports Parks. The fields, dubbed Little Padres Parks, were intended to create small replicas of Qualcomm.

A year later, the Lake Elsinore Storm announced it had ended its six-year affiliation with the Anaheim Angels and would become the Class A team for the Padres.