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Levine: Cubs Will Have New Clubhouse In 2016

By Bruce Levine-

(CBS) The Cubs' renovation plans will go full speed ahead at the end of the baseball season. The first and only area of Wrigley Field to get rehabbed in this offseason will be the bleachers.

Seating will be torn out and the back walls extended out toward the street in adding 300 seats. The back walls on Waveland Ave. and Sheffield Ave. are being raised three feet in order to have enough support for the planned videoboards and advertising signs that will be installed.

New bullpens will be going under the bleachers, and the batting cage in right field will be extended out due to the new configuration and  interior of the bleachers. For the umpteenth time, a Cubs official stated that no clubhouse remodeling or underground batting cages will be worked on until the offseason of 2015.

"The big thing for us will be designing the new clubhouse," Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein said. "Making sure everything will be open. That will be Opening Day 2016. They will be digging a hole this winter, then it's a process to build it up."

The plan is to go underground with the new clubhouse and facilities that Epstein and his baseball department are planning. A new visitor's clubhouse will be remodeled some time later in the four-year scheduled plan to renovate the 100-year-old edifice. The Cubs will sink $375 million into the ballpark rehab.

A Ricketts family LLC will invest another $200 million into a new hotel and building development across Clark Street just west of the ballpark. The site where a McDonald's and a parking lot exist was purchased by the family in 2012 for $26 million. Part of that agreement will allow the present McDonald's franchise owner to do business in the new building and retail complex next to the hotel.

Bruce Levine covers the Cubs and White Sox for 670 The Score and CBSChicago.com. Follow him on Twitter @MLBBruceLevine.

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