STARKVILLE — Sitting at her office desk at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Janet Marie Smith’s phone rang.
Normally on the move, it was unusual that she’d even be in her office. In retrospect, she was plenty enthused to stick around for the impending call.
It was Bill Blackwell — the executive director of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. He’d called to notify Smith that she had been elected as a member of the Hall of Fame’s 2020 class.
“I think it’s more than appropriate and perhaps a little overdue,” former Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles President Larry Lucchino told The Dispatch.
A Jackson native and a Mississippi State graduate, Smith’s career in ballpark architecture has spanned nearly five decades. Now settled living in Los Angeles as the senior vice president of planning and development for the Dodgers, it was the call from her hometown that put it all in perspective.
“I’ve never had an honor like this so I didn’t know what to say,” Smith said. “It’s incredible. I can’t believe I’ve done anything to be worthy of being in that class of American citizens.”
Humble beginnings
The daughter of an architect and a medical record administrator, Smith’s affinity for design was born at an early age.
After graduating from Callaway High School, she went on to Mississippi State where she was among the first students in the MSU School of Architecture, which was founded in 1973.
Listening to lectures from revered New York Times architecture critic Ada Louis Huxtable to Philip Johnson — who designed the Sony Tower in Manhattan — Smith was enamored with the profession and the prospect of working in civil planning.
“All these were names in the 1980s that were the rock star names in architecture,” she said. “And most of them had an influence not only (on) buildings but cities. And that was amazing to be able to learn from them.”
Following her days in Starkville, she went on to New York where she completed a masters degree in urban planning at City College.
Far from her roots in Mississippi, it was in the bright lights of Manhattan that she began to find her calling.
“I sought out this job at Battery Park City, which was developing 92 acres at the tip of lower Manhattan,” she recalled. “And that included office, residential, retail, but importantly also street and park and the waterfront esplanade and these really wonderful public spaces and sort of having that as a launching pad for my career.”
With her early New York-centric experiences in tow, Smith quickly climbed the ladder, moving to Los Angeles to work on the reinvigoration of downtown L.A. and the renovation of Pershing Square.
But with the slow movement of downtown, she sought something faster paced.
Sitting in the stands at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore taking in an Orioles game, Smith had an epiphany.
“Baltimore had already reinvented itself with the aquarium and the waterfront esplanade and the convention center,” she recalled. “And I thought maybe the whole notion of putting a ballpark downtown just brings another 3 million people into the center of a city.”
Ballpark builder
Larry Lucchino still remembers the letter.
Then the president of the Baltimore Orioles, Lucchino was in the midst of overseeing the development of what is now Orioles Park at Camden Yards in 1989.
With a stack of resumes and letters asking for employment before him, he shuffled through the deck. Of those, it was Smith’s that caught his eye.
“I remember saying to people at the time that she was the best free agent hire that entire offseason,” Lucchino said. “Had I known better I would’ve said over several seasons.”
He remembers asking her a question as she walked into his office for an interview.
“Before you sit down, tell me which league has a designated hitter?” he asked.
“I’m offended by the question,” Smith retorted.
Looking back, Lucchino concedes the remark was snide and in poor taste, but it offered some insight into Smith’s intense desire to succeed in baseball.
“One thing I love about baseball now is in many respects it’s just a big Central Park for a city,” Smith said. “It’s a mixing place, it’s a place where we come as a society and root for the same thing. It’s kind of amazing … because it’s 81 games a year to lift the civic psyche.”
Working on Lucchino’s team, Smith helped construct Baltimore’s latest ballpark by combining hints of traditional stadium style with new and improved ideas.
“We wanted a traditional old-fashioned ballpark with modern amenities,” Lucchino said. “Why no one had done anything new that was also traditional was a mystery to me, but that was the idea and Janet gave it life and detail and imagination and we fulfilled our promise in spades by building such a facility.”
Following the Orioles Park project, Smith went on to work for both the Boston Red Sox — where she reunited with Lucchino — and the Los Angeles Dodgers in developmental capacities.
In those roles, she would oversee the renovation of Fenway Park in Boston while also aiding in the ever-growing development at Dodger Stadium — a job she maintains today.
“She understood what Baltimore was and how to make Camden Yards a part of the downtown revitalization, what the Dodgers mean to the city of Los Angeles, how all of these teams fit into all of these communities,” said Malcolm White, a family friend of Smith’s. “And I think that all comes from her growing up in the public schools in Mississippi, going to Mississippi State University and coming out of this place that has this great sense of place and great storytellers. And I think Janet tells the stories of these places where she works through architecture and design really, really well.”
Back in Mississippi
Working in Los Angeles and living in Baltimore, Smith admits she doesn’t get back to Mississippi often. Further, many of the professors and faculty members she learned her craft from have left MSU or died.
And while Smith’s daily exposure to the state that raised her is limited, her induction into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame offers her a chance to return to her roots in Jackson and share the honor with her family — most importantly, her mother Nellie.
“I’ve got a lot of family that will be eager to be a part of this next August,” Smith said. “It’s really nice not only to be honored by my hometown and my home state but have it at a point in time when I can really celebrate it with my family and my mom in particular.”
The official induction ceremony is set for Aug. 1, 2020 at the Jackson Convention Complex. Other members of the class include former MSU athletic director Larry Templeton, baseball coach Jerry Boatner, golfer Pete Brown, former NBA player Antonio McDyess and Ole Miss and NFL linebacker Patrick Willis.
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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