Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership There's still luxury boxes, club seats, naming rights, concessions, parking, scheduling freedom, enhancing your branding at the stadium, etc. In fact, most teams that 'own' their own stadium probably technically pay rent on it (The Galaxy pays 4% of everything earned there to CSUDH, for instance.) My guess is that although this proposal is distinctly second-best for the Dynamo, if it was a dog that just would not hunt, it wouldn't have gotten into the media with a "certainly worth looking at" quote from Luck.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Well, I hope this pans out for you guys, good luck. Still, it is with a sense of irony that I begin to ponder the idea that San Jose could get a SSS before the Dynamo.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Yes, those posters are a bunch of in-breed idiots that live outside the city and want to tell us how to run things. You can usually tell by something as easy as their usernames! Happens all the time with other things like light rail and other big city issues they can't comprehend. Plus the part about taco trucks is even more absurd and false since Galleria is one of the more upscale part of town, which I can attest to since I have lived and worked here for about 8 years.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Paying rent, categorically, is not an issue. The key for any stadium is control of the revenue streams. The developers, in theory, are looking for an 'anchor tenant' to draw people to their development. The team is looking for a stadium where they control the revenue streams. If I'm the team, paying a little rent isn't that much of an issue. In fact, I might even go the Seattle route and look at getting these developers on board as part of the ownership group.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Any hint on the new design though? Would it be as simplistic as what the Dynamo had planned on for the first site? I would think that if a private entity was going to get involved and that the Dynamo were only asking for a maximum of $10 million before, that the stadium design would get amped up a bit with some additional private money.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership One knock on the Miami bid was that they would be "paying rent" at the FIU stadium despite the rent being quite miniscule AND having control over revenue streams. Because of Giants Stadium and RFK, MLS fans just get paranoid when they think about a team having to "pay rent."
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership And indeed, at least in the FIU and RFK cases (GS was so expensive to rent that it was an issue in and of itself) the bigger issue was what you're getting for that rent. At RFK it was shockingly little--no boxes, little club seat revenue, no concessions (DCU has since negotiated a deal where they pay $200k more but get the concession profits, which was a good trade-up for them), no parking revenue, no control over the quality of either, and not even decent stadium maintenance. FIU wasn't as bad, but the concern even there was far more whether you could sell premium seating (or make up for it in raw numbers) more than it was any rent that had to be paid. Technically, the Fusion had paid a token rent in Lockhart Stadium as well. (But again, the lack of good concession and premium seating facilities was a bigger issue than the rent.)
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Also, FIU's stadium is scheduled to expand to 45k in the next few years.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Right. I don't see why this is such a hard concept to grasp - everyone here must live someplace, pay rent or a mortgage to someone. If I were to ask someone if they're paying too much for their apartment, their monthly rent is meaningless unless I know what they're getting in return.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Here's a preliminary design of the proposed site near the Galleria that I think the Houston Chronicle site recently added to the online article. The freeway along the top is US 59 (the Southwest Fwy.). The freeway along the right is I-610 (the West Loop). The buildings at the top are part of the Galleria area, which is a very busy, populous mixed-use area. This area is definitely urban. It's in the midst of a densely-populated area with a wide variety of residential, commercial, and retail developments. It's not quite as central as downtown, but still fairly centrally located in terms of the whole metro area. Also, I think that Bubba's would be ok. IIRC, it's on the north side of Westpark Drive, whereas this proposed stadium site looks to me to be on the south side of Westpark. So, I think Bubba's would be right across the street from the development.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership It's actually $35.5 M benefit the Dynamo would have received from public money. $15.5 M - City purchased land $10.0 M - City Tax relief (only given if the county participates) $10.0 M - County Tax relief (where the deal stalled)
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Not that "simplistic". It wouldn't win any awards for creativity, but it looks beautiful to me (of course I think any fan who has their own stadium would say the same about their's regardless of looks)
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership If the roof covered the whole of the stadium in that top rendering pic and they stuck with that idea it would be a nice stadium on par with RBA and if Kansas City's holds up to the rendering then their stadium as well.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Yes, Bubbas would be safe. What Anderson left out is that Hwy 59 is a dagger thru what is called the Galleria Area and it's high dollar homes, lofts, stores, the mall, the class B business buildings and so one...and then all that is south of 59 in that photo which is Rice St. southbound with the first major street going east-west as Gulfton. Hilcroft to Chimney Rock up to Gulfton and south to Bissonett is Salvatruchville a fulls, so yeah land can indeed be given away around there for some type of urban rejuvination. There has been some growth in that area as developers have tried to bleed the Galleria theme south over 59 and it has some traction. Yet when considering parking and night life south of 59 man I would feel 1000x better about parking my car and drinking with my friends to make no mention of taking my kids to the East End of downtown rather than to anything near Gulfton. I mean it was a deadly place 20 years ago, like all of SW Houston, and has only gotten worse with MS's growth in the U.S. cities where they want to have a certain section of blocks to control. Which is why we have traditionaly called that entire area south of Hwy 59 "the Gulfton Ghetto". Even veteran cops that used to watch my store still talked of their time on the beat in the Gulfton Ghetto. That photo also doesn't do justice for a future stadium as any build out there even if our ground was to be 22K, that pic looks ok but I will tell you that plot of land is perhaps not near being large enough to handle a new stadium. Also, traffic would be a nightmare off of the 59-610 split which the viewer can get a glipse off in the right side of that picture.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Dude. Beautiful. Like Jonesta said, cover that thing up and it becomes first class.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership btw, you're in SEC country, you're not supposed to care about soccer. Learn your place.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Yea, but you'd have to live in SEC country to really get it....
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Here come the politicians... http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/sports/local/100128-dynamo-stadium-proposal
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership For a very good reason. Getting a public entity to own the stadium, or at least the stadium grounds generally means that there are no property taxes. This situation would leave that obligation out there.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership would this mean (galleria site) no sharing the stadium with pointy ball hooligans? I can't remember did they ever get as far as talk about turf/grass with the other stadium they would share with the Univ.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Holy hell. I thought the Philadelphia Inquirer commenters were bad. I like how they divide the world into Latinos and "American Houstonians". Around here, we just get people saying "it'll fold in a year, they'll only have ten people at each game." This despite having already sold 9,000 season tickets.
Re: Dynamo Offered New Stadium By Private Ownership Not quite accurate. HDC is owned by Cal State University Dominguez Hills, and is located on the campus of that school. AEG (or one of its subsidiaries) has a long-term lease and operating agreement, but pays rent to CSUDH. While they don't "own" the stadium, the distinction here is one only a tax lawyer could love.