With new hotel plan, Arlington urban environment is booming around Rangers ballpark

There’s a seldom-told story of team manager Ted Williams and his staff arriving for the first time in 1972 at Arlington Stadium, where his former Washington Senators would open the new season as the Texas Rangers.

It’s said that when they pulled up to the entrance Ted asked for the map to confirm they were at the right address for the recently converted minor league ballpark where their games would be played.

Remarking that the unimpressive facility was “in the middle of nowhere,” he wanted to be sure the spot was where the team’s future was actually going to unfold.

At the time, major league ballparks were typically in the midst of big cities with a backdrop of tall buildings all around.

Even after the new Ballpark in Arlington opened in 1994 and hosted the Major League All-Star Game the following year, some in the national sports media remarked that the game’s newest and finest ballpark seemed to be located in a Texas prairie.

Now approaching its 50th anniversary as a Major League city, Arlington has done something unlike most of the others. First came The Ballpark in Arlington that replaced old Arlington Stadium, then followed the urban environment that would surround it.

In the mid-1980s, a high-rise Sheraton Hotel and the city’s first convention center marked the beginnings.

By the end of that decade, with the change of the Rangers ownership, a new ballpark would be required. The Dallas media declared that meant the team would be relocating there, and some feared Arlington’s best days would be in the rear-view mirror.

That underestimated Arlington voters’ civic pride and quintessential can-do spirit. They showed up in record numbers to ensure, by landslide proportions, that such a move would never happen.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones watched that unfolding and would later conclude that his team’s future would also take place in Arlington — a conclusion that would be confirmed by another election to partner with Jones and build AT&T Stadium.

By 2016, current Rangers owners had decided they must provide an enhanced fan and player experience by developing another ballpark, this time with a retractable roof that would take everyone out of the Texas summer heat.

Arlington voters said “yes” to that proposal too, and that set the stage for what took place at a City Council meeting Tuesday.

In addition to the new Live by Loews Hotel and the exciting Texas Live! development at the entrance to the new Globe Life Field, we learned what is coming next.

It’s quite a Christmas present for Arlington, as described in the city’s press release:

“Arlington continues to build on its economic momentum with a planned $810 million expansion of the Entertainment District, which would add a best-in-class hotel brand, new convention center, corporate office headquarters, mixed-use residential building, small business co-working and incubator space, and even more dining, retail, and entertainment options for residents and visitors alike in The American Dream City.”

The 888-room Loews Arlington Hotel will rise 20 stories above the new convention center the world-class developer is building for the city to own. The mixed-use high rises described will create that long-awaited backdrop behind the games and events taking place in three majestic entertainment centers.

If Ted Williams was still with us, he wouldn’t have a single worry whether he had arrived in one of the country’s most iconic settings for a baseball game.

It’s really always been that way, but from now on, we should not hear any of those national sports media types talking about a prairie.