When Fred Ortiz went to last Monday night’s game at Globe Life Field, the highlight wasn’t watching the Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves square off in the first game of the National League Championship series.
The 53-year-old principal at HKS Inc. has spent four years as lead designer of the $1.2 billion, 40,300-seat stadium built for the Texas Rangers organization, and this was his first opportunity to see living, breathing baseball fans actually sitting in some of those seats.
It was also a moment for this first-generation Mexican American to reflect on his blessings, having grown up in a federal housing project in El Paso and becoming the first of his extended family to go to a U.S. college.
“I thought about how I wasn’t just doing this for myself but also for my family,” Ortiz said. “My dad always pushed us to take pride in our name. Yes, there was personal pride, but it was an overarching family pride.”
Opening Day on July 24 was supposed to have been Globe Life Field’s grand entrance onto the world stage, but COVID-19 put the kibosh on that. The only “fans” in attendance were giant cutouts behind home plate and the dugouts.
“The DoppleRangers were great, but come on,” Ortiz said with a laugh. "I got so much joy seeing real people stream into and move through the stadium and watching kids catch pop flies during batting practice.
“As I played anthropologist roaming the concourses, I found myself taking pictures of people taking pictures of themselves.”
Ortiz also got his first chance to see the stadium’s 24 million-pound, 5.5-acre retractable roof glide open in less than 12 minutes. It’s one thing to see a computer-generated enactment of the world’s largest single-panel roof in motion but quite another to actually see the real one give way to a crystal blue sky and the setting sun to the west.
It was so quiet that it was nearly a quarter of the way open before fans started to take out their phones and point them up, he said. “It was awesome and dramatic.”
On Tuesday, Ortiz will have an even greater thrill when Globe Life Field hosts the World Series — the first time in 76 years that Major League Baseball’s championship will be played at a neutral site.
“I’m ecstatic that the ownership of the Rangers, the city of Arlington and HKS will finally be able to showcase this project on the global level that it deserves,” he said.
Ortiz hopes that the lucky ones who actually get to see the best-of-seven series will leave feeling that they’ve never experienced anything quite like this 1.8 million-square-foot sporting and entertainment colossus.
Nowhere else, he says, can you enjoy an adult beverage while sitting in a massive rocking chair in a bar that hovers above the left outfield or take a 360-degree walk around the entire lower and upper levels.
Unfortunately, the ballpark’s suite seating at dugout level that runs from foul pole to foul pole is still off-limits.
Rob Matwick, Texas Rangers' executive vice president of ballpark operations, says it takes a special talent to be visionary, functional and personable.
“His demeanor is always so pleasant and professional,” Matwick said. “To do what he does on a daily basis as well as bring facilities like Globe Life Field to life is a combination few people can do.”
Matwick said one of Ortiz’s greatest contributions was to reorient the pillars on the stadium’s north side. “Those columns became interior to the building and made this beautiful walkway, which is now a signature element of the upper concourse of the new ballpark,” he said.
Learning early
All of this is a far cry from the municipal fields Ortiz played on while growing up in the Lyndon B. Johnson public housing complex in northeast El Paso.
As the oldest of five boys, Fred was in charge of the Ortiz brood while his immigrant Mexican parents, Aniceto and Teresa, cobbled a living as factory workers for an apparel company.
“I had to grow up quick,” Ortiz said. “Maybe that’s where I got a bit of my management skills.”
Six boys lived in an apartment two doors down from the Ortizes. “We had our own little team. We played against other streets. Nations Tobin Park was right next to the projects, so we would walk through the complex to get to the park and end up on open grass fields.”
Ortiz was the planner, sketching the diamond and the dugouts and marking the players and their positions.
“Growing up, my aunts and uncles called me Alfredito, little Fred. To this day, when I see my aunts who are like in their 80s, it’s: ‘¡Alfredito! ¿Como estas, mijo?’ It’s more like Alfredote — big Fred,” said Ortiz, who stands 6-foot-3 with an athletic build.
His family lived in a cramped apartment in an adobe-clad, run-down complex in central El Paso. “I don’t remember it having rooms — everything sorta flowed together,” Ortiz said. “I could walk over to the border highway and see the Rio Grande just beyond there and Mexico across the way.”
Moving into El Paso’s brand new federal housing project when Fred was in the third grade was a game-changer.
Ortiz vividly remembers waking up that first morning, opening the curtain and looking out the back window. “It was a bright day, and it felt like a new beginning,” he said. “Thank God for that move because it put me into a position to meet and be influenced by so many great people."
Among those mentors was Tony Shaw, who brought his U.S. Marine Corps work ethic and drill-sergeant voice to the football field of Irvin High School, where he coached Fred and two of his brothers.
“Coach Shaw was a father figure for me,” said Ortiz, who keeps in close contact with the 81-year-old, who is retired in Austin. "He instilled everything from the rigor to the discipline, poise, character, leadership, dedication — all those things. My motto came from him: ‘What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.’ That’s worked its way down to my kids. I tell them. ‘If you really want something, you just go get it. But it’s not going to be given to you. If they say run 100 yards, you don’t stop at the 100.’ "
Ortiz played tight end, defensive end and long snapper for the Rockets. “I never really got off the field except for kickoffs,” Ortiz said. “The little guys — the guys we called kamikazes — would run down and make the tackles. Sometimes I would score and then snap the extra point.”
Shaw was also responsible for getting Ortiz into college.
Ortiz knew from the time he was in elementary school that he wanted to draw beautiful buildings. He took drafting classes in high school and traveled to Waco his senior year for a statewide industrial arts competition.
Being an architect was his Plan B if he didn’t play for the Dallas Cowboys.
Shaw arranged a football recruitment visit for University of Texas at Arlington, which he knew also had a school of architecture.
The recruiters liked what they saw and offered Ortiz a full ride.
"I’m like, ‘Wow! There’s no way my parents can afford college.’ " Ortiz recalled. “ ‘I’ll be the first one to go. I get to play football and I get to study architecture. My God! God is so good!’ ”
Plan B became Plan A after a knee injury sidelined Ortiz early in his first season, followed by UTA canceling its football program.
“It was devastating,” Ortiz said. "Then the most beautiful thing happened. The university said, ‘Those of you who are on full scholarship, if you choose to stay, we will honor your scholarship.’ "
One of his coaches also offered him a scholarship at Louisiana Tech University. “The 18-year-old kid who had dreams of being a tight end for the Dallas Cowboys had to think twice about that.”
Ortiz turned to his second father for advice.
“So Fred calls me up all in a dither about making this decision, thinking I would want him to continue playing football,” Shaw recalled. "I said, ‘Well, you’re one of the top architecture students in the country. You’ve got a bum knee. Is there really a question here about what you should do?’ "
‘Had to be a part of it’
Architecture jobs were scarce when Ortiz graduated in 1990 during the real estate downturn. He went to work for a small D-FW firm and headed to Richmond, Va., seven years later for a change of pace and territory.
In 2007, he joined HKS’ Richmond office as the director of design. It had a small sports group that was an extension of the one based in Dallas.
“I got my taste of sports by working on a minor league ballpark in Lawrenceville, Ga., then some collegiate stadiums and training facilities,” Ortiz said. “When the opportunity with the Rangers came along [in 2016], I wanted to be a part of it, knowing that it was in Arlington, I was a fan and it was in our group.”
Ortiz commuted weekly to and from Dallas so that he wouldn’t have to uproot his twin sons, who were high school football stars in Richmond. One now plays for Texas Christian University and the other for the University of Florida.
Fred and his college-sweetheart wife, Cindy, returned to Dallas in 2018.
So what does a lead designer do?
“We pride ourselves in being good listeners, taking in what the client’s vision is for the project and then complementing it with our skill sets,” Ortiz said. “We take those words or phrases or experiences and actually make architecture that embodies all of that.”
In the hierarchical scheme, Ortiz works directly for Bryan Trubey, executive vice president and head of HKS' global sports practice. Trubey was deeply involved in all aspects of creating Globe Life Field, but Ortiz orchestrated how it looks, feels and functions.
"My role is very much like a director on a movie set, where you know that you’re going to shoot a scene, and based on the time of day, the lighting and the way things are looking, you might direct 70 people to do one thing. But then all of a sudden, you’ve got to shift directions.
“That happens with projects where you hit unexpected variables and you’ve got to pivot to maintain a high-value proposition without ruining what you’ve already done.”
That happened when the Rangers decided to go with artificial turf instead of natural grass.
“This project could have looked very different if it had been artificial turf from the beginning,” he said. “The change did influence mechanical systems, the way concourses were defined and access down to the event level. There is a lot of stuff that happens below the field.”
Ortiz is an accomplished artist who draws his favorite sports figures with colored pencils and pastels on black museum boards. Some of them have been autographed. It’s a technique that he developed while studying abroad in Europe.
Dan Noble, CEO of HKS, said he never doubted Ortiz’s ability to lead the stadium’s design efforts.
He first took note of Ortiz 30 years ago as a judge in a contest put on by AIA Dallas. Ortiz, a fifth-year UTA student, beat out professionals to win three of the top 10 prizes. Noble kept track of Ortiz on and off through the years before finally getting him to join HKS.
“Working on something that large and that takes that long, you have to have someone with emotional intelligence. And Fred’s got that,” he said. “His passion might at times push people. If you’re going to do quality work, that kind of tension is necessary. He does that in a way that’s genuine and authentic.”
Movie star to hand model
Ortiz knows a bit about movie sets, having played a Powhatan warrior in The New World, a 2005 flick about the Jamestown Settlement that was directed by Terrence Malick and starred Colin Farrell as Captain John Smith, along with Christopher Plummer and Christian Bale.
A casting agent had spotted Ortiz while he and his family were dining at their favorite local haunt. She was drawn to him by his strong profile and muscular physique.
During the makeup test, Ortiz learned that the part required a mohawk.
At first he balked, saying he was an architect who had to meet with clients. But he caved when he saw Ferrell getting his makeup and realized the gig was for real.
“It stood up about this tall,” Ortiz said, raising his hand three inches above his head. "I had on all this paint. It made me look awesome.
“Long story short, I worked 30 days on that film,” Ortiz said. “Watching Terrence Malick work was amazing. His making references to painters and framing the shot was unbelievable.”
That job also led him to a side hustle as a model doing stock photography lifestyle shots used by advertisers.
“I’ve been everything from a doctor, a Hispanic businessman, business traveler. I’ve done hand modeling, voice-overs, commercials. You name it, I’ve done it,” Ortiz said. "I get a kick out of friends sending me a text, ‘Hey, I just saw you on TV.’ "
Noble said he was walking through an airport recently and saw Ortiz dressed in scrubs in an ad for a hospital. "I was like, ‘I know that guy! That’s Fred. He’s not a surgeon!’ "
AT A GLANCE: Jesus Alfredo “Fred” Ortiz
Title: Principal and director of sports at HKS Inc.
Age: 53
Born: El Paso
Resides: Arlington
Education: Irvin High School in El Paso, 1985; bachelor of science in architecture, University of Texas at Arlington, 1990
Personal: Married to Cindy for 29 years. They have a daughter, Erin Scearce, 32, son, Nic 26, and identical 20-year-old twins, Antonio and Marco, who play football for Texas Christian University and University of Florida, respectively.
