Miller Sports + Entertainment has released renderings of Daybreak Field at America First Square, the new ballpark the company is building south of Salt Lake City for the Class AAA Salt Lake Bees. Miller Sports + Entertainment (MSE), which recently rebranded from Larry H. Miller Sports + Entertainment, is privately funding the $140M, 8,000-capacity stadium that, when it opens in spring 2025, will sit in the 4,100-acre Daybreak planned community; 1,200 of those acres, including the ballpark site, are owned by Miller Real Estate, which resides under the same Larry H. Miller Company umbrella as MSE.
Two-hundred acres surrounding the ballpark and the America First Square will consist of commercial development including a multiplex containing bowling, an arcade and high-end movie theater. HOK designed the stadium, which is being built by Okland Construction and will replace the Bees’ current home, Smith’s Ballpark.
MSE has only now released renderings of Daybreak Field, which has seating for 6,500 and space for another 2,000 on outfield berms, due to the organization’s courtship of the A’s, who considered playing the gap seasons between their exit from Oakland and a new stadium being built in Las Vegas at the new Daybreak Field. In that arrangement, the Bees (the Angels’ Triple-A affiliate) would’ve stayed at the existing Smith’s Ballpark. The A’s ultimately opted to play in Sacramento.
“We are building a 6,500-seat Major League ballpark, and it would have been such a perfect host for the A’s if that were to have been the best and most viable option for them,” said MSE President Michelle Smith.
Daybreak Field will feature 10 field level suites behind home plate, the closest suites to the field in all of Minor League Baseball, plus two additional Founders suites located on the main concourse behind home plate. Four-ticket loge box packages are available in 25 locations, with 16 Batter Boxes behind home plate and nine Bullpen boxes in left field, next to where relief pitcher warm up. Large groups and companies can reserve the upper-level party decks on the first and third base sides with room for as many as 475 fans on each side of the field. Two inclusive club spaces located behind home plate are available at Daybreak Field. Season tickets will be available in the 320-seat Diamond Club with in-seat hospitality delivery while the 395-seat Terrace Club has ticket-holder-only access to its club level for an assorted selection of catered food and beverages.
The district surrounding Daybreak Field, with the Wasatch Mountains towering in the background, will eventually include 900 apartments with 300 in the project’s first phase overlooking the stadium’s right field. Those will open in the summer of 2025. Additionally, the development contains 100,000 square feet of office space and 75,000 square feet of retail and food and beverage space. An outdoor amphitheater and team store open with expanded hours beyond non-gamedays will sit just beyond centerfield. A light rail system runs north to downtown Salt Lake City or south to the Provo region.
“That’s what I have loved being part of our organization,” said Smith, “the way it’s structured and having this robust real estate platform that we can then partner and create, building this whole community that is anchored with the new sports and entertainment venues.”
Daybreak Field is an important domino in what MSE hopes becomes a process that results in an MLB team playing on the west side of Salt Lake City. Miller Real Estate is developing the Power District, a 100-acre site that would house a potential MLB stadium, though the project is moving forward with or without the stadium. Daybreak Field can rightly be construed as an audition or smaller-scale blueprint of what MSE would try to do with an MLB team in the Power.
“I think it’s just priming it, what we’re doing with the Bees and building out in Daybreak,” Smith said, “in bringing MLB to the state of Utah.”
MSE has met with MLB but doesn’t know a timeline for the league to expand (if it even does). That said, the company likes its chances given its proven ownership track record — the Larry H. Miller Company owned the Utah Jazz for 34 years before selling to Ryan Smith in 2020 — it owns land, and has public financing in place to support the project through a 1.5% addition to a statewide car rental tax that would automatically be triggered if an MLB team was awarded.
“We’re continuing to check the boxes and preparing ourselves to be considered as a really healthy option for MLB expansion,” said Smith.