With the 2006 Baseball season underway United Spinal Association, a national disability rights organization based in Queens, is proud to announce that its Accessibility Services team has been selected by the New York Mets to ensure that its new Ballpark, scheduled for completion by Opening Day 2009, will be fully accessible to all fans with disabilities.
“Ensuring that our new ballpark is accessible for our fans with disabilities is very important to us. We have worked with the United Spinal Association on making accessibility improvements to Shea and have long co-sponsored their wheelchair softball team — The United Spinal Mets. We have worked together to invite disabled children from New York City’s public schools to our annual wheelchair softball tournament so that they can learn about adaptive sports that people can play no matter what their ability,” said Andrew L. Cairns, Vice President of the Mets Development Company.
The Mets announced plans for the new stadium on April 6th and the Accessibility Consultant contract was awarded to United Spinal by the Mets Development Company. Accessibility Services will be working with the architectural firm HOK Sport to develop what Director Dominic Marinelli predicts will be one of “the most accessible ballparks in the country.”
In an effort to gather feedback on preliminary elements of the design, United Spinal will host informational meetings for fans with disabilities at Shea Stadium.
The new Mets Ballpark will be built in the outfield parking lot between Shea Stadium and 126th Street. The existing stadium, built in 1964, was originally to be called Flushing Meadow Park but was later named for the popular attorney, William A. Shea, who spearheaded the drive to bring National League baseball back to New York following the departure of the Dodgers and Giants in 1957.
Through its Accessibility Services program, United Spinal Association shares 60 years of experience in making the built environment fully accessible to all citizens with mobility disabilities. The Accessibility Services Program has provided expert advice and consultation for a wide variety of projects such as the new Yankee Stadium, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Airport Expansion, the American Institute of Architects in North Carolina, the Maryland Department of Housing, the Army Corps of Engineers, the United States Tennis Association’s National Tennis Center, and the City of Aspen, Colorado. They have trained thousands of design professionals nationwide and play a prominent role in crafting landmark legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act. For more information about United Spinal’s Accessibility Services please visit http://www.accessibility-services.com or call 1-800-404-2898.
