Washington — Stan Kasten begins a tour of the Washington Nationals' new stadium in the center-field plaza. He points out a restaurant/bar named the Red Porch that he says will have "the same ambience" as Turner Field's Chop House. He points out a kids' play area that he says is the next step up from Turner Field's Tooner Field. He points out all sorts of spots where fans can spend time and money.

"All of this," Kasten tells a visitor from Atlanta, "should look familiar."

Then he points proudly to the feature that most distinguishes this sprawling entry plaza from Turner Field's: 14 cherry trees.

"We wanted to say D.C.," Kasten says.

Now president of the Nationals, formerly president of Atlanta's Braves, Hawks and Thrashers, Kasten is presiding over the opening of baseball's newest, glitziest stadium.

The publicly financed $611 million Nationals Park — from which the U.S. Capitol, the Washington Monument and the Anacostia River are visible — has its grand-opening tonight, with the Nationals playing the Braves on ESPN after President Bush throws out the ceremonial first pitch.

"National TV, 40,000 people and the president of the United States here for our first game — that's all," Kasten says. "No pressure."

That his old team, the Braves, also will be here is a nice coincidence, Kasten adds. (And they'll be back for two series in April.)

Nationals Park — the naming rights are still for sale — will be in an even brighter spotlight on April 17: Pope Benedict XVI will celebrate Mass from center field.

For Kasten, who still has his home in Sandy Springs and a condo "blocks from the White House," this marks the third time in his career that he has opened a big-league sports venue. As he walked around the stadium one afternoon last week, surveying the massive amount of clean-up and touch-up still to be done, he was comforted by the memory that Turner Field and Philips Arena looked about the same in the week before they opened.

And Turner Field had the head start of having been Atlanta's Olympic stadium the year before.

"Not only is this my third building," Kasten, 56, says, "but it's the third time I've said, 'I'll never do this again.'?"

An Atlanta sports executive for a quarter-century before resigning as Braves-Hawks-Thrashers president in 2003, Kasten became president of the Nationals in May 2006 — one day before ground broke on the stadium.

For the past 23 months, he and his No. 2 executive, former longtime Braves vice president Bob Wolfe, have been immersed in building what Kasten unabashedly calls "the most important sports venue in the most important city in the world." Also on the job: architect Joe Spear, of Kansas City-based HOK Sport, who worked with Kasten on Philips Arena.

The basic design for the foundation and structure of the Nationals' stadium — as well as the deal in which D.C. agreed to pay for the place — was done before Kasten and Wolfe went to Washington. But in order to get started quickly, the stadium was conceived as a "design-build" project, meaning construction began before all design work was completed.

Along the way, the Nationals expanded the entry plaza, a concept that, Kasten says, "works beautifully at Turner Field." Then they added the signature D.C. touch: a patch of cherry trees. "You literally can hit a home run into the cherry blossoms," Kasten says. "We're pretty sure the announcers will call that a cherry bomb."

As he strolls the wide, open concourses, the field never out of view, Kasten says the stadium should have the "hangout" feel that he loves about Turner Field — people milling around, spending money, leaning on a fence or a railing to watch an inning or two.

Such similarities notwithstanding, the Nationals' stadium is far from a replica of the Ted or any other ballpark.

The facade of steel, glass and pre-cast concrete echoes the architecture of government buildings and monuments, but breaks from the retro red-brick mold of most major-league parks built in the past 15 years. The stadium has 41,888 blue seats, about 8,000 fewer than Turner Field. The high-definition scoreboard is slightly smaller than the Ted's. The home clubhouse borrows its shape from another office in D.C.: oval. And no one seems to know whether this will turn out to be a hitter's park or a pitcher's park, or neither.

The waterfront stadium is in southeast Washington, near the Navy Yard, in an area badly in need of the revitalization the ballpark is supposed to bring. Compelling upper-deck views of the Anacostia River and Washington landmarks are offset by ugly views of an adjacent gravel yard that is slated for redevelopment — someday. Other sites around the stadium are in various stages of demolition and reconstruction. Cranes are ubiquitous.

Parking is sorely limited around the ballpark. The Nationals fear a traffic nightmare. But Kasten notes the stadium has "one thing we always felt was lacking in Atlanta" — a subway station a block away.

Inside, Kasten sees the stadium as a series of "neighborhoods," from the casual singles scene of the Red Porch to the ritzy power corridors of the President's Club.

For $300 per game, the President's Club offers high-rollers thickly padded seats behind the plate, a buffet dinner and a lounge with an oval cherry bar and a wall of glass overlooking the Nationals' indoor batting cage. In a hallway, about a dozen photos hang of presidents throwing out ceremonial first pitches, starting with William H. Taft at the Washington Senators' opener in 1910.

"This is one of the few towns where in your VIP areas, you have actual VIPs," Kasten says. "Not merely rich people, but real VIPs."

Kasten makes his way to the top of the ballpark, to the Nationals' television booth where former Braves announcer Don Sutton will call the action.

"When I stepped down in Atlanta, I said that if I ever [ran a team] again, it would be for an opportunity to build something bigger and better than I had done before," Kasten says. From Sutton's perch, Kasten looks out over the colorful ballpark, eyeing a million details and, beyond the outfield, the Capitol dome.

"Yes, I am quite pleased with how it turned out."

BRAVES SEASON OPENER

• Who: at Nationals

• When: 8:05 p.m. today

• TV; radio: ESPN; 640 AM, 94.9 FM