Do sports stadiums really revitalize neighborhoods?

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

I love minor league downtown ballparks. Such quintessential Americana.

second that!

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Whether the public money put into these projects is justified is a different question. It's been proven time and time again that public stadiums are almost always economic losers. They should probably be considered costs and not investments.

Stadiums should be local taxpayer free. A number of stadiums have been funded at least partially by hotel and rental car taxes. Why all stadiums aren't funded that way I'll never know.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Buckeye Native 001

29 years later and it's still an absolute fucking travesty.

Yep.

And holy fuck I'm getting old.

"New" Comiskey is now nearly 3 decades old.

How did that happen?

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

Stadiums should be local taxpayer free. A number of stadiums have been funded at least partially by hotel and rental car taxes. Why all stadiums aren't funded that way I'll never know.

It's still an opportunity cost (that money could be used to offset local taxes instead).

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

Stadiums should be local taxpayer free. A number of stadiums have been funded at least partially by hotel and rental car taxes. Why all stadiums aren't funded that way I'll never know.

Why not let the teams that will use them pay to build them. Then if there's a market for other uses, they can be a profit center for the teams. But if not, they are a proper business cost (pro sports is a business after all.

[suburbanite]

The problem is with ~30 teams in every league, and more like 40+ cities that can support said teams, there's always a city out there willing to pay to steal a franchise from another city playing hardball.

Also, the actual hard costs of stadium construction (minus land) are relatively flat across metros. The revenue potential varies massively though, as obviously Chase Center can support a 365-day event schedule far better than Green Bay or Tampa. If everyone was on the same page and agreed to stop subsidizing billionaire's vanity projects, we'd probably be better off at a macro level. We'd probably also see a lot more consolidation though, with the largest metros sucking up less profitable teams.

[thoughtcriminal]

I think the point I did not make in my previous post is that stadiums on their own, that are not a part of a larger urban planning project, and that rely on the hope that others will invest in the area after the stadium is built, don't do well. If stadiums are part of an overall revitalization project, the effect can be good, but they can't shoulder the weight by themselves. The Washington Nationals' stadium is an example of this. That part of DC was pretty rundown and abandoned, but it was brought back with a large amount of coordinated redevelopment and investment. The stadium was part of that - in fact it may have been the first component to be completed (I might be wrong about that), so it is seen as a driver in the revitalization of the area. But it's not as though the other developments in that area looked at the stadium and said "Hey look how well the stadium is doing there, let's build there too." Those developments were already in the works when the stadium was being built.

[thoughtcriminal]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

at least they stayed in the region.

in the case of the white sox, i honestly do believe that they would've moved down to tampa if they didn't get their new stadium on the southside.

and while i fully agree that giving public money to multibillion dollar sports industries so that they can build palaces for themselves is really stupid policy, in the case of the white sox, i am selfishly glad that they stayed.

chicago is the only city that has retained its two old school MLB teams in their original locations, which is cool from a history perspective.

if only reinsdorf had rehabbed old comiskey instead of ripping it down..... if only......


i will forever hate that man.



old comiskey. so many great memories!


source: https://www.horschgallery.com/chicag...-park-panorama

Love Old Comiskey, wish I had been to a game there. Went to my first White Sox game at new Comiskey the year after the old one was demolished.
Fun fact: Wrigley Field and Old Comiskey were designed by the same architect, Zachary Taylor Davis, who according to Wikipedia was called the Frank Lloyd Wright of Baseball.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by thoughtcriminal

Love Old Comiskey, wish I had been to a game there.

It was a spectacular ballpark. Its almost fully encircling double deck grandstand made it an intimidating and loud stadium, noticeably louder than the much more open Wrigley Field on the northside. Nothing will ever fully capture the intimate, cozy feeling of those old jewel box stadiums from the Golden Age, IMO. Thank God we still have Fenway and Wrigley at least.

I got to attend the 50th anniversary all-star game at old Comiskey with my dad back in 1983. It will forever remain as one of my all-time favorite baseball memories.




Oh yeah, FUCK YOU, Reinsdorf!

[mrnyc]

^ i went to a game at old comiskey. meh. now old tiger stadium, where i went to many games, that loss was a travesty.

[MolsonExport]

Jarry Park (Montreal Expos) was never built as a MLB ballpark, but despite being held together with spit and glue, it was outdoors, close to the field, smallish/initmate, real grass,...in short, a great place to take in an afternoon game.

Montreal's Olympic stadium, which replaced it, was a cavernous concrete toilet bowl, designed for...something other than baseball. It was indoors (or mostly so, so little sun), very far from the field, gigantic, fake turf...in short, a terrible place to take in an afternoon game.

After awhile, most fans agreed that the stadium was a terrible venue for baseball. His royal rectumness, Jeff Loria, and his wicked stepson David Samson did a bait and switch (trying to get Montreal/Quebec to pony up zillions for a new, purpose built stadium downtown, which they knew would not happen given Montreal/Quebec's precarious finances at the time), and then initiated a fire sale of the Expos roster, all while diluting the local ownership by one scam or another.

Those fuckers destroyed the Expos, and later bamboozled people in Florida out of hundreds of millions.


reddit

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

^ i went to a game at old comiskey. meh.

i'm sorry, but i simply don't know how to relate to anyone who got to see a game in one of the Golden Age jewel boxes and walked away with "meh".

old comiskey was magic.

new comiskey is meh.

[galleyfox]

Speaking of the White Sox, apparently there’s a documentary in the works about their stadium shenanigans back in the day.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/8/...-comiskey-park

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Why not let the teams that will use them pay to build them. Then if there's a market for other uses, they can be a profit center for the teams. But if not, they are a proper business cost (pro sports is a business after all.

Stadiums are a point of civic pride and even tourism. They and the teams that play in them help promote a place, so cities are enticed to build.

And because of that I say again they should be virtually local taxpayer free.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Most of the taxpayer-funded stadiums and arenas were the result of owners threatening to move their teams elsewhere unless municipalities bent over backwards to appease them. I think most cities/counties/states wised up to the ruse, especially during the Great Recession that these buildings are generally boondoggles.

That said, I'm not even a Browns fan, but I'll never forgive Art Modell for moving Cleveland's beloved team to Baltimore. Nor the Irsays for moving the Colts to Indianapolis literally in the middle of the night.

Anyway, Parc Jarry, Exposition Stadium and the old Arlington Stadium in DFW intrigue the hell out of me. Clearly none of them were originally built for hosting Major League Baseball and they sort of morphed into Frankenstein-esque abominations (in the Expos case, for less than a decade) that were quirky as hell.

Looking at pictures of Blue Jay's games prior to the opening of the Skydome, it looks like only half the stadium was used and created some really bizarre looking sightlines as a result.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by galleyfox

Speaking of the White Sox, apparently there’s a documentary in the works about their stadium shenanigans back in the day.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/8/...-comiskey-park

Oh, I will certainly look forward to that!




Sadly, it won't bring back old Comiskey.




Go fuck yourself, Reinsdorf.




Forever.

[ssiguy]

As a general rule I don't think downtown stadiums help rejuvenate an area and in fact can make it much worse. Stadiums by their nature take up huge amounts of land which, even when parking is limited like in large downtown, breakup the urban fabric. Outside of downtown they are usually horrid things being nothing more than a field surrounded by acres of parking.

Arenas, however, a very different matter. They are much more compact and even the largest only take up on city block. If they are not surrounded by parking they can be a real catayst for a downtown rejuvenation. Arenas, unlike stadiums, have far more uses.

Most stadiums when not having a baseball/football game sit empty while arenas play host not only to hockey & basketball but also concerts, theatre, conventions, trade shows, award ceremonies, even political and social rallies. They are facilities that have something going on all the time, night and day, and for all kinds of people and not just sport spectators. They cater to all demographics of all interests of all socio-economic standings. In this way downtown arenas with little of no parking can truly be a "community centre" which stadiums almost never are.

Stadiums in colder climates are even worse because 4 or 5 months of the year they sit basically empty and are essentially dead zones unless they have a roof.

[10023]

It depends on the sport as well.

A baseball stadium can certainly do so, especially with the “retro-style” stadiums that have come back into fashion after the horrible monoliths that were build from the 1960s-90s. But that’s because they play 80+ games per year.

An NFL stadium where they play every other Sunday, and then hosts events in the off-season, does almost nothing for the surrounding neighbourhood.

[Double L]

I reject that Minute Maid Park and the Toyota Center didn't have an impact on Downtown Houston. There used to be nothing over there and now along with help from the George R. Brown Convention Center and Discovery Green Park, there are residential high rises, hotel high rises, office high rises and retail. It's one of the best revitalization's that have happened in the city. Although Minute Maid Park and Toyota Center didn't do it alone, I've always considered them to be a huge success

[kingkirbythe....]

Minute Maid Park and Toyota Center had small impacts. Discovery Green was the real catalyst for that part of downtown.