It was Bruce Hoffman’s first day on the job. The Maryland Stadium Authority’s new executive director took over during the winter of 1989 with one critical project at the top of his to-do list: Build the Orioles’ new stadium.

He took the elevator at the Baltimore World Trade Center up to the 24th floor, where a meeting was being held at the MSA’s office with some of the top executives involved in the ballpark’s planning.

“I walked in, I sat down, and the purpose of that meeting was, ‘Do we keep the warehouse, or do we bulldoze it?’ ” Hoffman told The Baltimore Sun in a phone interview. “I listened and really didn’t participate … And at the end of the day, they said they’ll keep it.”

That decision proved to be one of the most pivotal moments in the development of the Orioles’ home park of Camden Yards, which has become instantly recognizable with the red-brick B&O Warehouse towering over right field. The stadium, which opened in 1992, was immediately lauded for its classic design and incorporation of city elements, ushering in a new era of ballpark construction across the league. It’s become a Baltimore monument that still stands today as one of baseball’s most iconic ballparks.

With a new ownership group led by David Rubenstein filling out the warehouse offices, renovations are coming for Camden Yards. Last summer, President of Baseball Operations Catie Griggs identified the center field scoreboard and ballpark sound system as projects that could be tackled first and hinted at more substantive changes to follow. The team is also moving the left field wall again, with plans to have the new dimensions in place by opening day.

“Baseball parks need to live and breathe and change and react to what the fans want, because if [they] don’t, then they become basically fossilized and out of date,” said Joe Spear, the original principal design architect of the ballpark for HOK Sport, now called Populous, and a consultant for the upcoming $400 million renovations. Populous declined to comment for this story through a spokesperson.

Yet while the perhaps overdue attempts to modernize Camden Yards might introduce new fan experiences and luxury seating options — ideas floated in a survey the team sent to fans in May — minority owner Michael Arougheti told the Sports Business Journal in an October story that the Orioles want to keep the ballpark’s character intact, saying, “Anything that gets done within the stadium is going to preserve that aesthetic and timelessness.”

The Orioles hope these upgrades, along with the ballclub’s continued attempts to field a competitive roster, will help draw national attention and reach new fans. Their total home attendance of 2.28 million last season was their highest total since 2015.

“I believe that Major League Baseball is going to have the All-Star Game there sooner rather than later, and I hope that that happens,” said former Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke, now the president of the University of Baltimore and an Orioles minority owner. “I think that if David and Mike Arougheti have their way, there will be a close connection between the Camden Yards area and the Inner Harbor area, which is being refurbished.”

It’s an idea, first envisioned by the late Larry Lucchino, that Camden Yards was built on.

The former Orioles president wanted the ballpark to be an extension of the city, which led to the bleacher seating in right-center field and Eutaw Street’s inclusion as part of the outfield concourse. Lead graphic designer David Ashton ensured even the little details played into Lucchino’s vision, from the Oriole bird wind vanes above the scoreboard to the then-unique statues of the team’s retired numbers that fans could walk up to and touch.

“The retired numbers, in most other parks, were just kind of plaques on the wall,” said Ashton, whose original sketches of the ballpark’s design elements now reside at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. “And I said, ‘Hmm, let’s make them something special.’ So, I turned them into pieces of sculpture. … People are gonna hover around those things, and they’re gonna get their pictures taken and so on and so on.”

Even the ballpark’s framework was built with steel, a nod to the historic steel plant at Sparrows Point, and local workers played a major role in constructing it. The MSA hired Maryland-based George Hyman Construction (now Clark Construction), to build the ballpark, making it a source of pride for those whose labor produced a true gem of their city.

“Yes, there’s going to be a renovation here that is going to modernize more aspects of it, but it still has that classic feel,” Clark Construction vice president and business unit leader Will Englehart said. “It just feels like the same old ballpark. You feel like you know where everything is. Yes, they change out concessions, they change out things, but you don’t even have to think about where you’re going. It’s so familiar. It’s so comfortable.”

Camden Yards’ location in the heart of downtown also allowed the MSA to incorporate much of the city infrastructure that was already there, including the Camden train station on the opposite side of the warehouse.

“This idea of Eutaw Street as an extension of the urban environment and something that would be open every day and contribute to the vitality of downtown was very important to us, both civically and from an urban design perspective, but also important in terms of thinking about how to make Camden Yards feel welcome,” said Janet Marie Smith, the Orioles’ former vice president of planning and development who oversaw the project.

Though Smith, now employed by the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Baltimore-based design firm she co-founded, Canopy Team, aren’t currently involved in the upcoming renovations, the club brought her back from 2009 to 2012 to handle the most recent round of stadium upgrades. She has seen the downtown area grow immensely around the ballpark and believes there is room for more as Rubenstein works to negotiate a development rights agreement for the state-owned lots around the ballpark.

“I think downtown in general would so benefit from many of the vacant office buildings being converted into residential, from having more ground-level, street-level retail, from having some of the snaggletooth empty lots filled in, absolutely,” Smith said. “And could Camden Yards play a role in that? Absolutely. So, I think that’s probably the hope for the next chapter is that there is more to be done on that front.”

Have a news tip? Contact Matt Weyrich at mweyrich@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/ByMattWeyrich.