Figured I'd start a new thread about this, so as to make use of the Reign subforum... I was trawling the internet looking to see if there were any word on new (hopefully non-permanently lined) turf at Memorial Stadium, when I came across this article: Memorial Stadium site among options for new high school. While it shouldn't directly cause a problem for the Reign as the article says the land deed requires the site to be used for athletics so the stadium will (likely*) remain, it seems their intention is to build the school where the parking lot is located. Which could have a negative impact on parking for Reign fans (I assume, admittedly I've never tried parking in the area for a Reign game ). * Depends on the exact terms of the deed, but they could theoretically remove the stadium, but still use an area of the site for athletic fields
Is it going to be in the parking lot? They've already talked about changing the orientation of the field to make it a 5k capacity stadiun with a north/south orientation. Perhaps they could shift the stadium deeper into Seattle Center and build the Memorial wall into the outside wall of the new high school?
I thought the article made it sound like they're intending to put it in the parking lot and leave Memorial in place as is (after spending $90-$100 million to build the high school, they won't be wanting to spend anything to redo the stadium). But I could be reading too much into the line "Parking also isn’t a major concern for the site." A worry I have, if they were to demolish the current stadium, is that the new facility would be built to be more multipurpose (like so they can play high school baseball/softball on it too) and would be built at a high school level, not a top tier professional soccer level.
2 thoughts -- One bad, one (kind of) good... + The recent Reign Survey had a number of questions that were clearly about a possible FUTURE change of home field. + I've lived in Seattle almost 27 years. They have been discussing this plan for that ENTIRE TIME. I would be surprised if it happened soon. The only thing that has happened in those 27 years is the Gates Foundation built on 2/3 of the land they were talking about for a possible High School and/or Soccer specific Stadium.
What sorts of questions? Hmm... I used to live in lower Queen Anne and never heard anything about it, though admittedly I had no interest in the topic as I was not a SPS student or parent (and there were no soccer teams playing in Memorial Stadium) so what they did mattered little to me. I'm not sure if anything is different about how likely it is, but it does seem enrollment in the school district is up, thus necessitating the need for more high schools? The article does say they expanded one and are re-opening another. So that may provide the impetus for building another school? (Though whether it's at the Memorial Stadium site or elsewhere remains to be seen)
Yeah.. Enrollment is way up and SPS was caught completely unprepared for the fairly rapid increase in enrollment. About a decade ago SPS was having knockdown, drag down fights with parents about closing schools because enrollment had been dropping and they didn't see it increasing. Not only that, but after years of neglect, pretty much all of Seattle's schools needed to be remodeled/replaced and they were/are in the middle of the process of doing that. Problem is, no sooner had they completed the closure process, Seattle started to go through a population boom and voters passed several initiatives to reduce class sizes. Unfortunately, SPS had already closed the schools and had either sold off the property, given long term leases to community groups to use the buildings, or were using the schools to temporarily house kids while they remodeled other schools. Just to give you an idea of what's going on, here's a map of the schools that have been remodeled/replaced (in red), those scheduled to be remodeled/replaced (in green), and those that still need to be remodeled/replaced (in grey) https://bex.seattleschools.org/assets/bexiv/BEXsitesfinal.pdf We were talking to one of our neighbors who is a teacher at one of the schools and she said that the schools were so over-populated right now that they are using every available space for classrooms (janitor's offices, teacher break rooms, dividing classes into 2 classes, etc) and enrollment is only increasing right now. Seattle is the second fastest growing big city and much of that growth is young professionals that are having kids or already have kids. Just to give you an idea. When my wife and I moved into our current house, only 2 houses on the street had kids and most of the people living in the houses were getting close to retirement. Since then, most of the houses have been sold to young couples, and seven or eight of the houses now have kids that are just entering school age.
Well it definitely sounds like they are in serious need of some additional classrooms (whether through expanding current schools or building new ones). And there sure are a lot of green dots on that map, so hopefully when those finish it will have helped a lot.
I took note mostly because there WERE questions about home field, which said they were either thinking about it or being forced to think about it There were a handful on that topic; i can't quote the questions exactly -- i remember one question about how i would feel about SRFC playing at CenturyLink, and at least two more about how far i'd be willing to travel for games.
Hmm... interesting. I wonder if that pressure might actually be coming from the league/owners rather than SPS? Once the Red Stars moved to Toyota Park, it left the Reign with the shortest pitch (which is surprising as there seems to be plenty of room to make it longer, just extending one end line to the back of the football endzone would make it longer than Providence Park and put it in the neighborhood of BBVA), narrowest pitch, and only pitch with permanent gridiron lines. Though I don't know if the league would really put an emphasis on the playing surface over the supporting infrastructure (which seems to be what Merritt Paulson is more concerned about anyway). Could be perhaps that the Reign want to make some improvements (and maybe on the condition of a long term lease) but SPS won't let them? Now I'm really just in full on speculation mode... but the forums are so dead lately, I need to do something to keep myself entertained! I do wonder whether Predmore has offered to pay to install a new artificial surface without permanent lines (and take out the first couple of rows of seats to make the pitch wider too). Hmm... interesting. I don't think CenturyLink would really be a better experience (from a fan perspective, would be better facilities for the players, though), except maybe for a 1 off game against the Thorns to try to break the NWSL attendance record... (or in the playoffs if they can't play in Memorial Stadium due to a conflict). I wonder about the distance questions. I wouldn't expect that they were considering going back to Starfire as it's capacity is smaller than their average attendance last season (and with their average attendance increasing each year, I wouldn't be surprised if the Reign break 5,000 average this year), plus the pitch size isn't actually much bigger anyway. So where did they have in mind?