Dan Meis imagines it all the time, closing his eyes and thinking about how the Bengals' new Paul Brown Stadium will look when it's finished in August 2000.
It's nighttime in his mind's eye. That's when the massive structure's translucent exterior will seem to glow.
"I think of it as a sailboat," he said. "I think it will feel very light, like it's floating on the riverfront."
Of course, few sailboats are 11 stories tall with 66,965 seats. But Mr. Meis, principal designer for NBBJ Sports and Entertainment in Los Angeles and principal designer of the stadium, promises that Paul Brown Stadium will be unlike any football stadium fans have seen before.
It's been hard for others to imagine how the massive structure will look on Cincinnati's western riverfront.
The Enquirer has obtained detailed architectural drawings of the stadium that offer an idea of just how dramatically the stadium will transform the riverfront between Elm Street and Central Avenue. Mr. Meis, a self-described "pretty rabid" NFL fan, designed the stadium to be fan-friendly, with almost nothing but good seats and a kind of intimacy that's hard to come by when you're watching a game with 66,964 of your closest friends.
But he also wanted a design that would reflect the action and movement of football and, at the same time, respect the stadium's prominent location on the city's riverfront.
"It occurred to us a lot of the football stadiums were looking the same," he said.
An early meeting between the architectural firm and Bengals President Mike Brown gave the designer the inspiration to do something different.
"Mike Brown said, "I guess these things all have to look the same because a bowl is a bowl is a bowl,' " Mr. Meis said. He thought to himself at the time, "Maybe they don't."
Mr. Meis knew the NFL complained about how difficult it was to sell so-called corner seats in traditional bowl-shaped stadiums, the least desirable spot to watch football.
He thought, "Maybe you don't have to have them."
His design for the Bengals stadium eliminates virtually all those seats by opening the bowl on both ends.
Mr. Meis, whose design credits include a $62 million multipurpose sports arena in Manchester, England, and a $750 million convertible domed stadium near Tokyo, also found inspiration from the success of the newer designs for traditional, retro-style baseball stadiums, such as those found in Cleveland and Baltimore.
Those ballparks are designed to open up views into and out of the stadium, he said, making the buildings feel "so much more accessible." He figured if he could just break up the bowl, the new Bengals stadium could feature incredible views to the river and downtown. And it would allow people outside the stadium to see the action inside.
The unusual end-zone seating sections also create what he calls a "feeling of neighborhood."
"We want to make those fans feel just as special as those with the 50-yard-line seats," he said.
The stadium's design connects the structure with the game, the fans and the city and county, said Art Hupp, a principal in Glaser Associates, a downtown architectural firm that does support work for NBBJ Sports and Entertainment.
Design respects river
Once the structure is completed, Mr. Hupp predicts, people will think of it as "uniquely Cincinnati."
Mr. Hupp's firm has concentrated most on "how the stadium flows to the city and how the city flows back to the stadium," he said. The success of that work is important.
Critics of the project have complained that the massive stadium and the team's three riverfront practice fields will consume too much of the city's precious riverfront.
But Mr. Hupp said the design is respectful of views to and from the city and to and from the river.
It won't be an island
Glaser is no stranger to riverfront design. Mr. Hupp designed Bicentennial Commons and the renovation of Yeatman's Cove.
"We've had this presence on the riverfront," he said. "We've felt very strongly about this linking of downtown with the river." Paul Brown Stadium's plaza, for instance, will be much lower than Cinergy Field's.
The plaza will be the elevation of Third Street instead of Fourth Street, the elevation of Cinergy Field's plaza.
The height and bulk of Cinergy's plaza make it an island, Mr. Meis said. The aim of his design is to make Paul Brown Stadium less forbidding.
A moving design
And the sense of movement the design brings to the stadium -- with cut-away views of different exterior finishes, stained swirling patterns on the plaza and even the use of birch trees with peeling bark -- will reflect the rush of the game, Mr. Meis said.
He likened Cinergy Field, and other, traditional bowl-shaped stadiums, to a dump truck and Paul Brown Stadium to a Ferrari.
"You'd have no doubt which one is the fast one," he said.
Mr. Meis said the bold, modern design is a "tribute to the Bengals," a team one might expect to be conservative because of its Midwestern roots and a family football tradition that began with the team's founder.
But Troy Blackburn, the Bengals' director of stadium development and Mike Brown's son-in-law, said the team had a simple philosophy from the outset.
Make it convenient
"Mike's charge to us was, "We do football. Do everything you can to make this an easy facility to get around in and a great place to watch football,' " Mr. Blackburn said.
"We think we have the best fans in the National Football League, and we think they warrant the best stadium."
The interiors are designed to be sleek and welcoming so the building can be used for events other than football games, he said.
That addresses critics, too, who have complained that Hamilton County is building a $400.3 million football complex with a $270 million stadium centerpiece to be used fewer than a dozen times a year.
For his part, Mr. Brown said the unusual design meets the specifications the team laid out from the start.
The team worked backward before designing, he said, listing major elements it sought before drawing.
"We wanted to get the fans as close to the field as we could, put as many seats along the sideline to the greatest degree we could, have a certain number of (luxury suites), and when we put those demands down, what came back is the way the stadium looks," Mr. Brown said. He particularly likes the features bringing fans closer to the sidelines and eliminating virtually all of the dreaded corner seating.
We're not in Cinergy
Hamilton County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus said it's impossible to explain how different it will be to watch a game in Paul Brown Stadium as opposed to watching a game in Cinergy Field.
"There's no way for us to prepare folks in Greater Cincinnati for what we are talking about," he said.
"When you walk into the new stadium and you sit in your seat, the concessions will be expanded, it will be more convenient, just a broader, different experience from beginning to end."
He hopes the stadium's design will make it the first element in a new Cincinnati skyline "that will be the envy of cities our size and larger."
The stadium's official groundbreaking is April 25. By August, the structure's beams and columns will start to form its frame. Just as designer Meis imagines what the stadium will look like when it's finished, Mr. Bedinghaus, designer of the sales tax increase for new stadiums, thinks about what it will feel like to walk inside Paul Brown Stadium in August 2000.
"My hope is that this is just the first of thousands of celebrations that will occur on our riverfront because the voters of Hamilton County took a chance on a crazy idea from some kid from Delhi."
Enquirer reporter Geoff Hobson contributed to this story.
