When Mike Veeck announced he was bringing the Saints to St. Paul in 1991, skeptics predicted his minor league franchise would fold within 45 days.

But as that first month and a half passed, Veeck penciled out financial projections, erased them all and started again — over and over.

“I did 11 budgets in the first 45 days, because I didn’t know what to expect,” the Saints co-owner recalled Friday.

He also ripped up the big-league playbook, borrowed a few tips from his late father and embraced his own irreverent sense of humor. The Saints’ between-inning antics would incorporate haircuts in a barber’s chair, massages delivered by a Catholic nun and even mime performances as instant replays. Some ideas live on; others live in infamy.

“I’ve always been fascinated with mimes,” Veeck said without a trace of embarrassment in his voice. “Even though that tanked, I got a chance to try it. It was such a tragic failure that at my wedding at the St. Paul Conservatory, they had a mime jump out from the flowers.”

The Saints threw out their first pitch at Midway Stadium in 1993, and the beloved home team has been holding court for a generation.

Now, Veeck’s “Fun is Good” franchise has ripped up its playbook yet again, this time envisioning an airy, 7,000-seat ballpark in Lowertown that promises to turn traditional ideas about ballparks on their head.

Home plate will be situated at the basement level of what had been the long-vacant Gillette manufacturing plant, the former home of White Rain shampoo. The pavilion-like entrance will sit across a narrow street from the popular St. Paul Farmers’ Market, residential lofts and condos. Whenever Saints offices are open, passers-by will be welcome to stroll the grounds and enjoy lunch in the aisles.

Not everyone is impressed.

The $63 million ballpark’s proposed bricklike facade, submerged playing field and open-air feel has angered some traditionalists who say the features are not in keeping with the denser, red-brick architecture of Lowertown.

Yet, the project has delighted fans who say tearing down the Gillette/Diamond Products building has removed a giant wall obstructing views of downtown from Dayton’s Bluff, and vice versa.

“The fact that it doesn’t look like any other ballpark doesn’t disappoint me,” Veeck said last week just before boarding a plane to a “Fun is Good” speaking engagement before a soccer association in Boca Raton, Fla.

“It’s open; its sense of light and being able to view into the neighborhoods — ballparks just by definition are heavier, and they kind of sit there. This one feels different to me. Maybe it’s the wood along the concourse. Maybe it’s the deferential treatment, so that art reigns supreme.”

“Like Target Field, say they built that in Lowertown,” he said. “That would tower over everything. That’s a whole different feel. We’re more to scale. But we also tried to build something that doesn’t attempt to overpower.”

Critics are undeterred. In an email to a reporter Friday, Lowertown resident and Saints fan Ronald Schleyer called the ballpark design “wimpish” and compared it to “a U-Haul return park or a public storage facility somewhere in South St. Paul.”

Veeck waved off those criticisms and praised project architect Julie Snow for abandoning Norman Rockwell-inspired visions of hometown yards, “retro” parks such as Baltimore’s Camden Yards and heavier designs such as the Old Comiskey Park in Chicago.

He said an industrial desert will be replaced with green space open to everyone.

“I never had a conversation with Julie Snow and said, ‘Don’t make it look like any other ballpark.’ It’s a park. It’s a play yard. It’s a playground,” Veeck said.

“It’s surrounded by almost this kind of ethereal feeling, for the fans and the community, rather than the club. Which is in keeping with our feel. The Saints have always been community first. It’s really kind of an intellectual design.”

On Thursday, the Heritage Preservation Commission voted to give the design a general seal of approval, with seven caveats recommending everything from the placement of trees to street signage and public art. The State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) has been more openly critical of preliminary drawings and is still expected to review plans at least twice more.

The state office’s involvement represents an important wrinkle because SHPO concerns could affect a federally supported loan the city will receive for environmental cleanup of the demolished Gillette site. Nevertheless, city officials say they’re confident that designs will be locked down within a few weeks, major construction will begin in April, and the ballpark will replace the deteriorated Midway Stadium and open to the public by May 2015.

The original Comiskey Park is one Veeck knows well. His father, another legendary marketer, came to own the Chicago White Sox in the 1940s and brought his son on board in the late 1970s.

“I will always love Comiskey Park, the old Roman arches. I was raised in that ballpark, and I obviously have some familial ties to it,” Veeck said. “But once (Baltimore’s) Camden Yards was done, everyone said, ‘Hey, let’s be retro.’ ”

A false sense of history, he said, wouldn’t work for Lowertown, either.

“We weren’t trying to build something that worked well in Baltimore,” he said. “I will say Camden Yards is my favorite of the new retro ballparks. But we’ve got something light and airy … where we’re not trying to overwhelm (the neighborhood). It ties in beautifully to the Vento Nature Sanctuary. It serves almost as an apron, if you will, to Lenny Russo’s Heartland (restaurant) and the same for the farmers market.”

Veeck, who co-owns the team with movie actor Bill Murray and investor Marvin Goldklang, spent more than two hours stuck in traffic Thursday in Charleston, S.C., in an attempt to get to a party in his team’s honor in St. Paul. It was as good a metaphor as any for his strategy to date in dealing with both the architectural team behind the team’s future home and some of the ballpark’s most vocal critics: hang back and wait it out a bit.

After years of lobbying for state funding, he readily admits he and the other team owners have been sitting more or less on the sidelines while Lowertown residents, members of the city’s Heritage Preservation Commission, city officials, the design-build team behind the project and team execs debate ballpark aesthetics. As ground is broken for construction, he expects that to change.

Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172.

Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.

IN HIS WORDS

St. Paul Saints co-owner Mike Veeck talks about his team’s team’s new stadium plans and other topics.

ST. PAUL VS. CHARLESTON, S.C.

“You can’t argue with Charleston in the winter, but St. Paul was the culmination of all my dreams. Every promotion that I ever had, every idea I ever had, I kind of saved to try out, and it worked better than I could have hoped. There’s things you can’t do in Fort Myers, where we handle the Twins Spring Training. There were just things we always wanted to do.”

ON HIS TEAM

Executive vice presidents Tom Whaley and Annie Huidekoper, a customer service and community partnerships exec:

“Annie Huidekoper had no baseball experience. She was a home healthcare (worker). Tom Whaley — a lawyer and a rock’n’roll drummer. We call him the human metronome. I’m also a drummer. My timing is terrible.”

“She was passionate about baseball. She loves her Red Sox. And she was passionate about a minor league team. … She has revolutionized customer service. She has made it so personal. Annie’s known as the fixer, the one who takes care of things. Annie’s the one who determined that 40 percent of the seats in our new ballpark will be the same or cheaper than the seats in the old ballpark.”

ON BALLPARK CRITICS

“Do you remember how many people were opposed to Target Field? … Buildings have an amazing way of opening, and critics going away. … I would hate to have something built that no one said anything about. I grew up in Comiskey Park, and people were telling me ‘you ought to tear this down and build a new ballpark.’ And then we built a new ballpark, and everybody hated it. You’re never going to please all the people, and if you did, that’s when you’re really in trouble.”

ON THE LIKELIHOOD HE’LL THROW OUT THE FIRST PITCH IN MAY 2015

“You never do that in your own ballpark.”