Mods, for the sake of accuracy, can we change the title of this thread to read "60-120 months"??? Please and thank you.
12-24 years. Really. I believe @KaptPowers has mentioned, and probably has the link, that shows some early communications from 2006, about a new stadium happening. We're more than 12 years into it at this point.
The earliest I recall a mention of a Revs-only stadium was 2004. This was when they had all the fans on one side of the stadium so it would make it look like more on TV. Spoiler alert: It didn't look any better on TV.
Another "impossible" stadium situation resolved before Boston??? NYCFC stadium announcement could come this year, says Yankees president March 19, 2019, 11:42AM EDT Charles Boehm
I'm beginning to think we should all stop driving ourselves crazy about this. They're not building a stadium in Boston. It's never going to happen. It would be better to figure out ways to make the Gillette experience better for soccer.
1.) Difference making players. (Big name if possible.) 1a.) Win games. 2.) Serious public transportation. 3.) Serious lessening of the stream of weak BS from owners and FO and coach on many topics. That would be a better Gillette soccer experience.
One would expect professional sports management types would have some or all of these on their Life Goals card at the front of their Day-Timer, and also would have already figured out some of the ways to do some of these. (Regardless of their Brigadoon-esque stadiumquest obligations.)
These threads have been years and years of rumor, followed by silence, followed by rumor, followed by "we're committed to an urban stadium" pronouncements by Garber/Revs org, followed by silence, followed by us opining on what they should do in Foxboro to make it better, followed by rumor (maybe with a rendering...stadium porn!), followed by silence followed by....NOTHING. Every road leads to nowhere.
Say! That line of thought suggests the perfect inaugural non-soccer event at Krafty Bob's Brigadoon Park: a Talking Heads reunion concert!!! (It's particularly apropos given that David Byrne has been insistent that such a reuniting of the band will never take place.)
If Gillette is their permanent home, at some point they're out of the league. They try to make it a better experience, but there's only so much lipstick you can put on that pig. It's tawdry and being left behind. I just don't think it's salvageable. FWIW, I'm becoming increasingly convinced they should move to Providence. They'd fill their stadium. They city would rally around them. It's not that far a trek for those of us in Boston. There's even good rail transit between the two cities. Cincinnati's not that much bigger in terms of population, and it doesn't have a mega-urb like Boston right next door.
I just shared the following in the "Mr. Kraft, sell the elfin' team! Please." thread and thought that I'd cross-post here. The problem with anyone hoping to build a soccer-specific stadium for a Major League Soccer franchise within the Boston urban core is the dearth of large plots of privately-held, developable land. I recall reading a report five or six years ago that said public entities - a variety of federal, state, and municipal agencies and departments - control upwards of 54% of the land in the City of Boston. These entities largely control and protect historic land, cultural buildings, and property where it is deemed that the interests of the citizenry are best served by public stewardship. Within the 46% of privately-held land, residential space is vast, with the percentage of private holdings dedicated to commercial development small by comparison. Mixed-use development has historically been an even greater rarity within the confines of Boston proper. Further, the top 5 private landholders own just 4.5% of the area that is classified as private property. One of the largest contiguous plots of privately-held, developable land in Boston (and neighboring Revere)? HYM Investment Group's 161-acre Suffolk Downs property. Frankly, If I were the Krafts - or, some new potential owner(s) of the New England Revolution - I'd be trying to negotiate a partnership with HYM that would support the siting of a soccer-specific stadium within the confines of the proposed development. Otherwise, I fear that opportunities for an MLS franchise to set-up shop inside the borders of Boston proper are only going to become less likely to materialize.
How much money do you envision the Krafts asking the State of Rhode Island and/or a local municipality to contribute towards a soccer-specific stadium project in the Ocean State? I mean, if a $38 million investment of state and local funds to help finance construction of a new home for Rhode Island's beloved PawSox failed to win backing, the odds are slim-to-none that there's going to be a groundswell of support to steer public dollars into a soccer-specific stadium for the Revolution, particularly when said facility is likely to carry a price-tag of between $200 and $250 million. In my honest opinion, the Krafts getting a significant public subsidy towards the construction of a home for the Revs in the Ocean State is a pipe-dream.
Eventually, yes. I don't expect it to happen quickly, but Gillette is a problem you can't fix. They've tried. It's a matter of when the league finally decides to stop this farce. Maybe that's a post-Garber or post-Bob issue. I'm just saying at some point the franchise that's been left in the dust gets dropped. That's how the world works. I don't pretend to know Rhode Island politics, but the PawSox aren't exactly beloved (I've never been to a game there where it's more than half full), AAA baseball doesn't get broadcast nationally, and the Krafts have a certain amount of cache in greater New England. If Providence/Rhode Island wants in on a sport where it gets to play with the big boys, then it's soccer or nothing. If you want to argue there's vastly more important things than gaining national attention in the arena of sports, I'll agree. Yet it's possible that type of marketing and the Kraft name could open up some purse strings, at least for a land deal. MLS is a different type of opportunity and I don't think PawSox math applies.
It's been a really long time since I've seen fit to post anything here (been lurking for several years, though). To be honest, I agree with most posters in this thread and other threads like this one that doubt Kraft's ability (or anybody's for that matter) to build a stadium inside Boston for the Revs... it's just not likely to happen. That said, I think there is a slim possibility that it 'could' happen at some point, but it's with a catch. I think the only thing that could make it a reality would be if Kraft brings the Pats along with the Revs and proposes a 70,000+ seat dual-use stadium inside Boston (i.e., Gillette Stadium 2.0) similar in design to what Arthur Blank did in Atlanta. The Revs just don't have market power in the region and have a bad reputation with those who follow the sport, thus lack the glamour necessary to get Boston politicians and residents behind a stadium project like that, but our six-time NFL championship team does. On top of that, there is a world cup coming up in the next decade and you can be sure as s**t that Boston would love to get all of that sweet international tourist money that would come with world cup games played in the Hub, rather than out in Foxboro. Gillette Stadium is getting old and will need to be replaced in the next decade. Personally, I could live with a set-up like that. Hell, we've been second-class citizens in Foxboro for decades, at least we'd be second-class citizens in a spanking new stadium close to the T.