Weighing pride and practicality, Houston debates Astrodome's future

By Scott Gold, Los Angeles Times, 8/24/2003

HOUSTON -- Where have you gone, Evel Knievel?

When the Houston Astrodome's climate-controlling doors opened on April 9, 1965, and 42,876 wide-eyed spectators watched Mickey Mantle crush a home run in an otherwise meaningless exhibition baseball game, the stadium was dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World."

It was a title born of Texas bravado, and the building came to embody the big, preposterous thinking -- sending a NASA rocket to the moon, building a mammoth port 30 miles inland -- that has made Houston one of the largest and most innovative cities in the United States.

But the world's first domed, air-conditioned stadium, where America was introduced to the then-startling concepts of fake grass and watching baseball indoors, has been eclipsed. This summer, Houston is in the grips of a debate over how to save the Astrodome, or whether to bother.

As civic leaders, architects, and activists weigh a spectrum of possibilities, from tearing down the dome to refurbishing it into a mammoth indoor park, an awkward question has emerged: Is the Astrodome an architectural wonder? Or is it a relic?

Houston is enjoying a remarkable run of professional sports stadium development. When the Toyota Center, the NBA Rockets' new home, opens in September, it will mark the third major sports facility to open here in four years, following Minute Maid Park, home of the Astros, and Reliant Stadium, the $449 million monument to Texas football.

What the Astrodome has to offer now are memories -- Knievel jumping his motorcycle over 13 cars, Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the Sexes," Frank Sinatra handing a rose to a fan after singing a tribute to the Apollo 11 astronauts.

The dome, once the epicenter of Houston's civic life and public image, sits vacant and silent. Its air conditioners, capable of circulating 2.5 million cubic feet of air each minute, are silent, except during the occasional monster truck rally or private party. Texas writer Larry McMurtry once described the Astrodome as rising "soothingly above the summer heat haze like the working end of a gigantic roll-on deodorant." Larry Albert, a local architect, knows that many see the dome as a white elephant. But it's Houston's white elephant, he said, and an important landmark."This is a town which, in my mind, is focused on making life possible where it might not seem obvious," he said. "If you accept that as the secret mission of Houston, it becomes entirely clear that the Astrodome is not just a big baseball stadium, not just the first indoor major-league venue, not just a gigantic air-conditioned space, but in its spirit and in its intentions really symbolizes everything that Houston strives to be." Ramona Davis is the executive director of the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance, which is preparing to lobby for the inclusion of the Astrodome on the National Register of Historic Places, which could ensure that the building wouldn't be razed.

"There's been concern for a while that it will be torn down," she said. "That's what happens around here. If something is sitting idle, the first thought is to tear it down."