Imagine a Lowertown warehouse building turned inside out to reveal the dark brick of its hallways, black steel beams and cedar finishes.

That, in a nutshell, is the vision behind St. Paul’s new $63 million ballpark, which will open in May across from the Farmers’ Market.

“You’re never really in the ballpark,” said St. Paul Saints vice president Tom Whaley. “You’re in downtown.”

CHS Field, the future home of the independent league Saints, gave up its secrets Friday during a tour led by Whaley, team founder and co-owner Mike Veeck and team vice president Annie Huidekoper.

“All we said to (concept architect) Julie Snow was make the town, make the Farmers’ Market, the star,” said Veeck, standing by the concourse of the 7,000-seat ballpark. “She said, ‘Oh, you mean make it porous.’ I said, ‘I don’t know what porous means.’ ”

On Friday, he figured it out.

“You can see the city from every angle,” Veeck said with his back turned to home plate and in the distance, Interstate 94, Dayton’s Bluff and Metropolitan State University. “You can’t tell from here where the Farmers’ Market stops and the ballpark begins.”

Saints organizers are promoting CHS Field as one of the most affordable, handicapped-accessible and environmentally sustainable professional sports arenas in the country.

It also promises to be among the zaniest.

The building, along with about 180 concerts and sporting events each year, will be managed by the team owners, leaving the recreational future of Lowertown in the hands of the men and women who originated the slogan “Fun is Good.”

Midway Stadium’s familiar between-inning antics and characters, including Mudonna the giant pig, will be transplanted to CHS Field alongside Sister Rosalind, a massage therapist who offers visitors backrubs. Moving trucks are scheduled to transport costumes and equipment from one ball field to the other Thursday.

The most controversial aspect of the park for its neighbors has been parking.

“There’s about 3,000 (parking spots), give or take, within about an eighth of a mile,” said Whaley, pointing to lots at St. Paul’s Union Depot. “There’s a lot of parking.”

Veeck said many fans will just walk to games after work, and those who haven’t already done so, will discover Metro Transit’s Green Line, which stops nearby.

The construction of CHS Field, which is situated slightly below ground level, is about 90 percent complete. Home plate lies on what had been Old Fifth Street.

Fold-up stadium chairs with cup holders make up the bulk of the ballpark’s seating. There also will be $6 bleacher seats and the grassy berm near the Fourth Street entrance, where fans can watch the game for five bucks.

Team officials say that, overall, hundreds of fans will pay the same price or less than they paid to attend Saints games at Midway Stadium.

With ticket prices ranging up to $28, the fun promises to remain affordable. What’s been shed is the cramped quarters and creakiness of the old stadium, which was built in 1982 in an industrial park.

CHS Field’s three clubhouses — one with lockers and cubbies around a carpeted floor emblazoned with the Saints logo — are a big improvement over Midway. The team’s training spaces include a weight room, a hydrotherapy room with hot and cold plunges, and a sizable area for indoor pitching mounds and pitching machines.

Up on the glassy concourse, a clubroom can seat up to 250 banquet or wedding guests in front of a bar lined with western cedar finishes, a touch that’s found throughout the ballpark.

Unlike Midway Stadium, which relied heavily on portable toilets, CHS Field will offer about 200 stalls and urinals in heated restrooms, including 21 women’s stalls in one restroom area alone.

The stadium offers 120 wheelchair-accessible seats, about double what’s recommended under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, as well additional seats for semiambulatory patrons who need extra legroom to accommodate a cast or walker.

An array of 300 solar panels will power about 12 percent of the park, and a giant cistern behind a center field wall will store rainwater from the roof of the Green Line’s operations and maintenance facility next door to irrigate the field and flush toilets in 13 stalls.

The Saints will play their home opener May 21, but the ballpark will be in use before then for amateur games and the Hamline University Pipers, who are renting one of the clubhouses. Veeck on Friday predicted the facility will play host to 180 events annually, and most of them will not be Saints games.

The 17th annual Twin Cities Jazz Festival, a fixture at nearby Mears Park, will rope in CHS Field in some capacity in June. Also in June, a traveling Japanese baseball team will practice there for several days — and possibly play an exhibition game against the Saints, said Whaley, who added that details were being worked out.

Critics, including members of the St. Paul City Council, have made much of the ballpark’s $63 million price tag, which rose $9 million, or 17 percent, in 2013 because of increased costs for the design and contaminated soil removal.

The state has paid about half the cost of design and construction through bonds and environmental grants. The remainder has been split between the city and the team, as well as outside grants and naming-rights revenue from Inver Grove Heights-based CHS Inc., an agriculture and fuel supply business.

Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.

BALLPARK BY THE NUMBERS

$63 million: cost of new Lowertown stadium.

7,000: Seats, including 2,800 that will be same price or cheaper than Midway Stadium.

300: solar panels that will power about 12 percent of stadium.

200: restroom stalls and urinals.