There’s no generic blueprint for securing a stadium that opened before World War I. Fenway Park, which has welcomed fans since 1912, sits at the intersection of two realities that don’t naturally get along: a 114-year-old physical structure with all the architectural constraints that entails, and the expectation that security operations match what any modern large-venue environment demands.

When the Red Sox organization and Johnson Controls set out to overhaul Fenway’s security infrastructure, the project quickly became something more instructive than a routine stadium upgrade. It became a real-world test case for a question that operators of historic venues across the country often grapple with: How do you bring aging security infrastructure up to current standards without doing damage — physical or otherwise — to the thing you’re trying to protect?

Fenway's experience suggests the answer lies as much in planning as technology. Preservation, operations and security were treated as interconnected design objectives rather than competing priorities, shaping everything from installation decisions to long-term maintenance and future scalability.

That work began long before anyone picked up a drill.

The problem with waiting

For many legacy venues, one of the biggest operational challenges isn’t simply aging infrastructure. It’s the reliance on reactive maintenance, where equipment problems aren’t addressed until they begin disrupting operations. Reactive maintenance is expensive and disruptive in any facility. In a venue where structural interventions can carry preservation implications, the stakes are even higher.

At Fenway, the gaps were real. Cameras and access control equipment were struggling to provide the kind of proactive monitoring that prevents small issues from becoming operational disruptions. When something did break, it required a truck roll — dispatching a technician on-site — which drove unpredictable maintenance costs and extended downtime. According to Johnson Controls, legacy infrastructure can run 30% to 40% more expensive to maintain than systems with proactive lifecycle management in place.

Ryan Kozul, Senior Director of Ballpark Operations at Fenway Park, described an infrastructure that was no longer keeping pace with the venue's operational needs. “We saw fundamental flaws in security across our entry points, seating areas and restricted spaces, all of which tied back to our outdated infrastructure.”

The installation problem nobody talks about enough

Running cable through a century-old stadium sounds straightforward until you’re actually in the walls of a building that’s listed on historical registries and carries the kind of cultural weight that makes a misplaced drill hole a news story. The physical installation challenge in legacy venues is real and often underestimated.

Aging architecture and historical preservation guidelines come with the territory, according to Greg Parker, Vice President of Americas Life Cycle Solutions at Johnson Controls. What sets legacy work apart from a standard install, he said, is “the added responsibility to keep character intact.”

The solution at Fenway centered heavily on going wireless where possible. A wireless video surveillance network reduced the need to run new cabling through the building’s existing structure — a significant advantage when the walls you’re working around have preservation requirements attached to them. Digital integration also became a core design principle rather than an afterthought. By connecting video surveillance and access control under a unified platform, the team could consolidate functionality without multiplying the physical footprint of the technology.

That planning carried through to the deployment itself. The project included 429 Illustra cameras integrated into American Dynamics NVR systems, including three 32-megapixel cameras covering the bleacher areas. Forty-nine access control devices (IP links and controllers) were prioritized and sequenced based on traffic patterns and operational importance, ensuring the highest-priority entry points were addressed first. The deployment balanced broad security coverage with a relatively modest physical footprint, helping preserve the ballpark’s historic character.

Treating preservation as a design parameter from the outset, rather than a constraint to work around, ultimately shaped both the planning process and the deployment itself.

Why early alignment changes everything

Parker was emphatic on one point that practitioners often learn the hard way: interoperability and integration have to be discussed before design is locked in, not after.

“If systems integrations and interoperability are not discussed and planned for in the earliest stages, then projects are vulnerable to inconsistent goals, miscommunication or project delays,” he said. “That’s where Johnson Controls comes in: with our services, we are helping customers visualize real-world examples of the ROI that can be realized when interoperability is considered early in the design stage.”

At Fenway, this meant bringing together construction, facility and business teams before decisions were made. Not to check boxes but to surface the operational priorities that would drive design choices. Which access points carry the highest traffic? Which security zones are most critical during non-game events? What does the maintenance team actually need to manage the system day-to-day?

That kind of early-stage alignment isn’t unique to historic venues, but it matters more in them. When you can’t tear out walls or run conduit wherever you want, knowing exactly what you need before you start installation eliminates costly corrections later. In a building where every intervention has structural and aesthetic implications, doing something twice isn’t just expensive, it’s potentially damaging.

Kozul reinforced this from the operator’s side: “It’s incredibly important to work with a partner who fully understands both the historical significance of a venue, the technology behind a modern approach to security and has experience working across departments to holistically bring that vision to life.”