Official unveiling of the New Crew Stadium name is in about an hour. I hope everyone's seated, cuz this is very exciting: Lower.com Field https://www.lower.com/ It's an online mortgage/financial services company. A spin-off or subsidiary or... something of Homeside Financial LLC.
Maybe. I'm still not convinced Burkle is the ultimate bad guy here since he's turned around and is throwing money at another team almost immediately (and he's part owner of another top level mens team too). Not to mention his known wealth is 2 billion dollars. I'm still thinking he found something fishy in the Nagle led plan and balked but stayed quiet so Nagle and Co could fix whatever was wrong.
No, but it was easily within his capabilities to do. Something stinks with how this went down. I mean what kind of league announces an expansion team without actual pen to paper in this day and age?
DC United has some undeveloped land adjacent to the stadium. Article on selection of a developer in 2019. On a related note, Audi Field itself also has outward-facing retail sites that are as yet unfilled.
United never even finished the original Phase 1. The southeast corner by the original PEPCO area where the bleachers are still sitting was originally supposed to built by now. Likewise, the bike valet area has had signs up for Mozil's coffee place that was for some reason supposed to replace the bike valet for more than a year.
FC Cincinnati has a holding company that has been buying up property in that area. They also bought other land in the area while finalizing the stadium deal. A recent purchase was an older church in the area.
From reddit: The Chicago Bears have submitted a bid for Arlington International Racetrack for a potential new stadium. This could leave the Chicago Fire as the sole tenants of Solider Field. This is pretty much the best thing that could happen to MLS short of the Revs or NYCFC actually getting their own stadium....
Could you explain that? The Fire would avoid scheduling conflicts or lines on the field if the Bears move out. But they don't need a 60K seat stadium and games are likely to have all the atmosphere of early Wiz games at Arrowhead or early Metrostar games at Giants Stadium.
Not to mention the Bears don't own Soldier Field. Will the city leave it open just for the Fire if it loses it's long time tenant?
Who says they don't need a 60k stadium? All they need to do is to change their name to City, United or FC. Seriously, I imagine there would be major modifications if not a complete rebuild.
I honestly wouldn't mind if we did change the name to something less MLS 1.0, but obviously that isn't the only thing preventing the team from selling 60k seats a game. It'll be tough to do a complete rebuild- the stadium still is iconic and sits on prime lakefront land. While I don't think it's protected as a landmark any longer after the last remodel turned it into a combination spaceship/cruiseship, there would probably be significant pushback to anything that doesn't preserve the columns, and spending tax dollars to renovate it without another tenant would be a tough sell. The Fire recently proposed taking an old high school stadium on the northwest side of the city and turning into their headquarters/training grounds, and got significant pushback for that proposal even though it would ostensibly be paid for by the team without any tax dollars. Doing a teardown/reno of SF for them alone would be very difficult to pull off. The Bears submitting a bid to buy the land in Arlington Heights is something though- at least on the surface, it means that they're looking to contribute something and not expecting AH to foot the entire bill, although I'm sure they'll get a ton of tax breaks and other incentives from the suburb to make it happen. If nothing else, it signals that this might be more than a bargaining chip for them to secure a better lease at SF, but it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out long term.
The fact that teams search for new stadiums so fast in the US astounds me. Wasn't Soldier Field extensively renovated less than 20 years ago?. Americans use stadiums like napkins. A well built stadium should las 35 years at least isn't it? Am I wrong?
Baseball culture, not so much as Phenix states above. but there are exceptions. the Texas Rangers of Arlington built a brand new stadium for their team in 1994 and now have just opened another new stadium for their team here in 2021. Stadiums, or the lack of a new one at the request of a billionaire owner, will get your team relocated fast. Luxury suites wanted and history of the old stadium be damned.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/attended-first-game-major-league-144447707.html We attended the first game at Major League Soccer's newest stadium in Austin and it is easy to see why this is the future of sports
What does this mean "The stadium was built for $270 million, just a fraction of other recent oversized stadiums which have all the bells and whistles but which lack personality and a sense of community." or this? And this made me laugh: "The grass, even after one-half of play, was impeccable." Wtf?!?
I mean, sure it's a bit less than say 1/4 of the cost of Mercedes Atlanta and about 1/4 capacity...but...sense of community...?
The Braves moved into Turner Field after the 1996 Olympics. They just opened a new stadium in 2017. Should be noted that Turner Field is being converted into a Football stadium for Georgia State.
Or used for college football. Rose Bowl and Coliseum are approaching 100 years old. Now that I think about it, L.A.'s been very good for keeping stadiums going. Dodger Stadium is among the oldest in MLB too (and still works very well other than parking).