The New York Stadium is pretty awesome. Firstly, its seemingly ridiculous name is a nod to the area in which it is placed, which is in turn named after the former Guest and Chrimes Foundry who produced the iconic New York City fire hydrants. Secondly, it has this strange staggered roof at either end which bridges between the much bigger main stand and the smaller East Stand. It's reminiscent of their old stadium Millmoor, which itself had this weird staggered roof due to different sections being built at different times. £20m, which I suppose is between $30-35m depending on the exchange rate.
Americans have come to expect these amenities, even in minor league facilities. The Rotherham stadium is suh-weet.
The thing I really liked about the Rotherham stadium was the steep rake of the stands. Not sure that it comes across in the pictures posted, how much steeper the stands are, than in other similar sized stadiums. It also means the outer facade of the stadium is much higher and more impressive than other similar sized stadiums. The steepness of the stands means that you are still pretty close to the pitch, even when seated towards the top of the stand. Sadly I won't be visiting Rotherham this season as my team got relegated, while Rotherham got promotted.
Depends what you want from an stadium though. If you want something that is 12,000 forever, you would probably build something very steep and tight. If you want something modular and expandable, the rake has to be much more shallow. I always use the Valley as an example of this. Charlton built their East Stand first, it's genuinely frightening to walk down the steps from the entrances at the back to get to the best seats in the house about halfway down. It's so steep, you can't build anything on top of it without tearing down what is already there and starting again. Partially this is due to the relief of the Valley, the stand is built into a hill. However, on the flatter west side of the stadium, they built a bare-bones single-tiered open stand with the foundations and structure to build an upper tier with a roof if required. When they were established in the Premier League, they built the upper tier and while it’s not exactly salubrious, it does the job. When I say not exactly salubrious, we have to bear in mind you get utterly arctic, Candlestick Park-esque weather that blows off the River Thames (just ½ mile away) and the way the stand is built means that if you go down to the catering facilities, you have to buy a hot drink to keep your hands warm. When you’re wearing gloves.
Was just noticing how much I liked that stadium in this Chorrillo - Cruz Azul game. Beautiful little stadium.
I think many folks have bought into the need 'room for expansion' idea for soccer stadiums here in the States. Reality is that lower division clubs have not proven that they need to expand their stadiums. MLS clubs on occasion, but not minor league teams. Minor league baseball teams rarely expand their stadiums, but rather build all new ones. NASL clubs should be looking at New York Stadium and others as a prototype. It is a finished stadium, not one that has to be expanded to look complete. That said, I think the Scorpions' stadium is expandable and looks great.
Sportski centar Hrvatskih vitezova / Croatian knights sports center, Dugopolje, Croatia 5,200 capacity ~ € 10M http://dugopolje.labs360.com/360/high/start.html 360° Awesome venue.
That is the difference between a growing sport, and an established sport that really doesn't have room to grow and is probably on the decline. There is too much uncertainty about the future growth of soccer in the US. With that uncertainty, especially at the NASL level, you need to be able to be flexible. If you double ticket sales in just 10 years the local governments are not likely to want to spend another $50 to $100 million on a new stadium when the old stadium still isn't paid off. It makes sense to have that option to expand for a relatively meager $10 to $20 million when you are relying on a third party to provide funding.
Part of that was the mid-1990s mandate from the National Association that they do so, or risk losing their franchises. Pawtucket, Buffalo and Scranton-Wilkes Barre are the only Triple A ballparks that predate that mandate. The only Double-A stadiums that predate it are in Reading (1951), Richmond, VA (1985, though it was a AAA ballpark at launch), Huntsville (1985) and Harrisburg (1987), though the last two have been renovated in the last seven years and, in Huntsville's case, it still wasn't enough to keep their team. I'd have to check, but my guess would be the bulk of those 60 ballparks in AAA and AA were either built to replace very old ballparks or to attract a team to a city that didn't have one previously. So we have not yet seen a situation where a team "outgrew" a ballpark of recent vintage (at least not many...Kane County in the Midwest League has gradually added to its ballpark over time due to very large demand) and either expanded it or tore it down and built a new one. If minor league teams find their current digs to be inadequate, they're usually as likely as not to be poached by a community willing to build a brand-new stadium. So the comparison to soccer is not a great fit just yet. People talk about their lower-level team's stadium being "expandable" (and in San Antonio's case, it obviously is and will be, while Portland got a serious makeover.
I fell in love with this little stadium this weekend (saw it on TV, Leganes - Barca game): 10-11k people. Though I guessed 20k or more when I saw it on TV. It looks very intimate, great atmosphere. Cameras were located mostly in the main stand, so they mostly showed those roofless stands on TV.
Also I love this little 5,000 seats Portuguese stadium (Estádio da Madeira). Two stands, each holds 2,500. It also has 20 luxury boxes, a small hotel, at least 6 bars and restaurants, multi floor parking, etc. Maybe the most pimped small stadium?
A few team in the NFL are actually DOWNSIZING their stadiums?! I was watching the Cowboys - Redskins game on Sunday, and I thought there was something strange about Fedex Field. I googled it and found out that they have taken out THOUSANDS of seats in the last several years. I believe that the Dolphins have also removed seats from their stadium.
That's in 2007, right? A bit over 3k this season so far, 2.5k last season, so I think in the long run it was an ok decision. Back when they expanded, they were at their peak as a club, fighting for Euro spots, they had big dreams, so it's understandable. There are many over-expansions. Scotland had some really bad ones that even dragged clubs down into bankruptcy. There was an official rule until recently that every Scottish D1 club must have a 10k stadium, so some small town clubs went into heavy debt just for that and now have 10k stadiums and 1-2k people in them. It's also more expensive to maintain a bigger stadium, so overspending continues. Just all around a bad situation.
Falkirk stadium (Scottish championship): Capacity 7,937 Built 2003-2009, 3 stands finished. The 4th isn't in the plans right now, as the club has been relegated since 2010. Maybe not as impressive from inside in its current unfinished form, but impressive from outside! One of behind the goal ends: Temporary stand on the unfinished side across from the main stand:
Gayfield Park in Scotland on the shore of the North Sea. For romantic souls. Room for 6.6k people, but mostly standing tickets.
It may be sacrilege to post this in a thread on the NASL side of things, but two stadiums in USL really stick out to me. The first is still my favorite SSS in the US, MUSC Health Stadium in Charleston featuring the Three Lions Pub. It seats 5100 and they averaged 3517 this past season. While the Rotterdam stadium is probably the long term goal for a lot of NASL/Division 2 teams, Charleston should be a first tier goal. The second is Highmark Stadium in Pittsburgh. The river view is fantastic, especially when there's boat traffic. It holds 3500 (they averaged 2494 this year) and is expandable past 18000. Even with that small capacity, there are 15 luxury boxes of 12 seats each. It opened in 2013 and was built for $10.2m.
Based on location I just can't see how they can expand it they have a train track om one side and the river walk on the other.
It's already built into the plans. The three sides with stands would expand vertically. Here's the wiki info on it: The supporters section (which is behind the goal on the right if you're facing the river) can add 2,000 seats. Then they wrap the corners to add another 1,000. That gives them nearly 7,000 total as they've got around 400 standing room spots. The next one is to build on the grandstand (over the road) to get to 10,000. Then you keep going up. I know there's a Euro stadium with one stand built over the road, but I don't remember which one it is. I would venture that it's most likely this stadium stops at 7,000 and they find another spot if things get big enough to consider joining MLS.
I don't want to get into it too much right now but the expansion capabilities of Highmark Stadium have been overstated, and those plans are inaccurate now a days.
I've been there a couple of times, and that's why I'm more in the camp that it wouldn't go beyond the 7,000 mark (which isn't bad) before getting replaced with a new, larger stadium if MLS was the destination.