Rochester's Dream Dies

but what about the rhinos future?

Didnt the owners say that if they didnt get their own stadium in a 2 years, that it wouldnt be viable for them to continue? what a sad day for the pride of the A league. and an MLS franchise, if only for a legitmate SSS.

why did paetac park die, and cannot that 15m plus private funds be added to build a SSS for the rhinos and the lacrosse team. perhaps expandable to up the seating to 35K for Nats games and internationals.... amazing the short sitedness of polititians, but also they are looking if they drop all this cash for a SSS and then the rhinos fold, or MLS doesnt come, what are they going to do with this stadium. too bad, but lets hope there is a "Hunt" out there with deep pockets to get the stadium started somewhere

 

You guys need to chill. This game is still not over. It is entering inning 24, but it isn't over.

 

What a blow?

It's not like Rochester is trying to build something for an NFL or NHL franchise.

Here is a community which could be successful with one major professional sports franchise. Maybe it's not a Fab Four franchise; however, it's the next best league in line.

The Rhinos are profitable and $15 million is only 5 per cent of what New York would be asking to build a new stadium for the Yankees.

Visionaries here in Oklahoma City went before our voters and asked for the money we needed to build a new 19,000-seat NHL-NBA quality arena; AAA baseball park, downtown riverwalk canal, North Canadian Riverfront Development (3 strategic dams) and 5 other projects. Plain and simple we told them that it was a vote for our city's future and it passed.

Rochester needs that $15 million along with some future local public financing and private donations.

Forget about renovation of Frontier Field, don't settle for this--it should be a new stadium or nothing.

Take the $15 million and build what you can.

Lacrossse may not be in the future (as a league) for Rochester and it may not have anything to do with your community support for Lacrosse.

The quality of what you get built of that stadium alone at 16,000-seats will make the voters eventually support it when it comes time to expanding it 22,000 - 25,000 seats to meet MLS specifications.

Make sure that when you vote on these projects that they are bundled (all or nothing) and include some infrastructure projects, arts and some projects that improve the quality of life image of a beautiful city like Rochester.

Once the money is committed for expansion, Rochester is in and one season at 16,000-seats will create a demand for MLS tickets.

MLS will accept Rochester as long as they know that the money is there for stadium expansion. This is part of your stadium plan.

Good luck, Rochester--don't settle for less!

 

sure sounds like it is to me.

soem interesting quotes from article 2


Donner believes any major retrofitting of Frontier Field would exceed the $15 million New York state has allocated for the proposed soccer stadium.

Frontier Field director Jim LeBeau thinks Frontier Field could be redesigned to become more soccer friendly for $15 million or less. The Rhinos figure the project would cost considerably more.

"We adamantly oppose retrofitting Frontier Field," Donner said. "The feasibility study should be for a scaled-down soccer stadium."


and like jacksonjazz said-

"But even if reconfiguring Frontier Field were an aesthetic success, it wouldn't provide what we need for the long-term viability of the Rhinos," Economides said.

very disappointing, if this is the path they go down, we could see one of the most popular teams in the country go to grave.

 

i said that before talking about the desmojnes stadium... they reduced the capacity of Pae Tec Park from 25K to 13-15K, and i said that that shouldn't be the bottom of that... now we are seeing the results... sorry for rhinos....

 

good. I never liked rochester.

 

Rochester Woes--Thinking Small

This seems to be typical of Western New York municipalities. Think small, be small. Just look at Buffalo with their Negative Growth and Negative population (only major city with shrinking or stagnant population). Why stay there when the people who make the decisions continually make the WRONG decisions. Cities have to help provide the financial impetus for things which improve quality of life. Does everyone in Rochester like Soccer? Most likely not. However, there is a large, dedicated, chunk of the population who do and who enthusiastically support their A league team. One way a city can grow and benefit from helping their team get a stadium is by having the team include commercials that advertise the city during their games. Buffalo did do this the past couple of years during Bills games and it's a great way to get the word out.
However, if Rochester continues to think small and not take risks they will never move ahead. They will maintain and while that is comforting to some, it doesn't do much for the city's appeal to others--like myself. Maybe a good idea would be a stadium plan that puts the site closer to Buffalo and allows the team to draw from both metro areas?
Get with it Rochester and make it happen!

 

i never liked you.... and people like you... i personally don't like the rhinos... but if it's stadium will help for the growing of US soccer, bring it on!!!!

 

The real deal...is that the Boreball team bought the City Council.

The Rhinos bring in lots of money for the people that run the stadium, and the boreball people get some of that. If the Rhinos have a shiny new stadium and don't give any money to BOREBALL, boreball packs up and leaves. So then the City Council is stuck paying for Frontier with no baseball team in it.

Soccer bent over and took it for baseball. It's right there in those articles that the viability of the baseball team would be damaged if the Rhinos left.

Screw baseball. Move the Rhinos. I know a great stadium where an MLS team used to play. And the business guys who run the Rhinos can obviously manage circles around the idiot that used to run the Fusion. So, they go, they hire a dozen LOCAL staff people, and by 2004, Miami is back in MLS with good commited management, and everyone who was a Rhinos fan can move to Florida.

Now THAT is a plan.

 

THAT is allucination my man......

i don't know if the rhinos would die or what... but geez.. this was a sad story

 

Why the need to attack another sport. I thought it was Oliver Tse who resorted to name calling like Loudy Foudy. The sport is "baseball".

Teams and organizations always try to protect their revenue streams. It's called capitalism. You know, the "American Way". Sure, it definitely hurts the Rhinos, but it's nothing the Rhinos wouldn't do if the situation were reversed.

 

I was sympathetic with your arguement right up until your last statement which only serves to illustrate the ridiculousness of your position... btw, you are absolutely right... baseball and other sports will do whatever they can to suppress and bleed soccer in this country...

Maybe you need it spelled out... the reason that some soccer fans treat other sports with derision (like it makes a difference to these sports) is that soccer gets treated like cr*p by them, their stooges (read this to mean the so-called sports journalists) and the various lackies that feed off of pro sports (in this thread, read this to mean the Rochester "Sports Authority")... there is no way to ignore this and there is no way (at this point) to retaliate... you are absolutely right, these other sports will do anything to keep soccer a minor childhood recreation in this country (discouraging even this as much as possible)...

for you to tell someone who feels (rightly, I might add) that the sport they passionately follow is being shafted, that they should treat their persecutors with respect without any further justification is ridiculous... to tell them that is is futile or, more importantly, that it may be counterproductive in some ways does at least make at least a bit of sense...

to equate using the term "Loudy Foudy" (which has been used even by her WNT teamates) with the use of terms like "basebore" or "pointyball" is mixing apples with oranges and contributes nothing to the discussion.


rand

 

OK, How about the game occupied by steriod crazed millionaires and the working rich who toil in luxury for ultra-rich parasites that skim the public coffers for stadiums using financial wizardry to appear less wealthy than the bums that stand in line for scalpers who buy up all the good tickets so a working stiff can't dream of taking his son to a game in box seats more than once a year, while shafting the general public for tax dollars to build stadiums totally controlled by the parasites that don't pay property taxes on the working assests they control, and then sell luxury boxes to the friends who write off a portion of the cost as business expenses-game?

Does that sound better to you?

Do you see why I'm hacked off at baseball people? Do you see why this is kind of the last straw? That it's not enough that baseball in Rochester is the parasite on the body Rochester, but now we learn that it's attached itself to soccer for it's own self-preservation?

I don't hate baseball. I even went to a game the other day. But I DO hate it when other sports organizations and their lackeys maliciously damage the material interests of MLS and other soccer organizations. And this is exhibit 2 in the saga of "how the big six sports industry is trying to bleed the life out of soccer."

 

It sounds like all sports would get screwed by retrofitting Frontier. It would make it crappy for baseball, and crappy for soccer and lacrosse. I don't think it's baseball buying off the city leader's, it's the city leader's unwillingness to stick a crowbar in their collective wallets and fork over some dough.

Macon, GA is going throught the same thing, and they don;t even have soccer. Their mayor would not commit to helping the Braves renovate a 70+ year old stadium, as had been their agreement, so when Rome, GA citizens voted to build a new baseball park, the Braves announced they were moving their SAL Class A affiliate there, leaving Macon high and dry.

Put the blame where the blame is due. Everybody suffers when the leadership is short-sided.

 

No more Macon Whoopee? This is a sad day.

 

One thing has to be understood about Rochester. These Red Wings are the original club to bear that name, not Detroit. Rochester's baseball history dates back to the 1880's and, as popular as the Rhinos are, makes Rochester's soccer history look like a novelty act. And further, again inspite of the Rhinos' popularity, the Red Wings will probably be in Rochester long after the Rhinos, and probably the USL, are moldering in the grave. Ironically, ballpark enthusiasts don't like Frontier Field either. It may be a bad soccer ground, but it's not an outstanding ballpark either. The seats are too steeply graded and too far from the field for the Minors.

Call me crazy, but didn't the Rhinos average 3-4,000 when they played outside of Rochester? And it was the move downtown that saw the increase in attendence? Wouldn't building in Gates have the same effect?

 

http://users.bestweb.net/~merzbach/frontier.htm

See, like I said. Baseball people aren't nuts for this place either.

 

That is interesting, and (though the last sentence my express an undue pessimism) a decent enough point. But somewhere the city needs to balance those facts against the fact that the Rhinos seem to be supporting the Red Wings.

The irony at work here is that the Red Wings seem not to be viable in that stadium by themselves. The issue is not that the Rhinos are not popular enough to merit a stadium (or make it viable, despite what what their feasibility study claims) but rather that they have been successful enough to become vital to the current one.

That said, if the Rhinos really aren't making money in that situation, or can't find another option to do so (are there no high school stadia in the whole city they could play in as a temporary option?) in order to eventually save up the dough to pay for a stadium themselves, then they've done something wrong.

You've given it the old college try, guys. Now it's time to do your own thing.

 

True enough. But this talk that the Red Wings are not viable without the Rhinos belies the fact that the Wings have been around for more than a century and found a way to make do for the 90+ years that the Rhinos didn't exist. If the Rhinos folded/moved tomorrow, the Red Wings would probably just find another source of income. Their ownership knows that they can make a tidy sum from the Rhinos, concentrate on developing the Orioles of tomorrow, not exert any effort at promoting the club (either on or off the field), and still do quite well. Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the Bruins' owner.

 

Isn't Macon Whoopee a minor league hockey club?

 

Actually. You're right. Don't know why I got briefly confused. The M-Braves are/were the low-A Atlanta Braves. Through 1997, the Durham Bulls where the A-Advanced club, so we saw most of their players a year after they did.

 

Yep, they're gone, too. All they have left is their afl2 team, the Knights.

 

Yes, it would be truer to say that the stadium would probably not be viable (without being a ward of the city) without the presence of both teams. Which is why the Rhinos need either to move on, or at very least have a credible threat in hand to do so in order to secure far better terms for playing in it.

It's notable that the city plans on trying to get its hands on the money the state had allocated for a Rhinos stadium for a $15 million retrofit of Frontier (how much was the state going to pny up? why, $15 million). Frank DuRoss needs another option so tht he can say "I'll see you in hell before I see you collect $15 million for the purpose of my inprisonment.