McCullers blasts Columbus, wants better parking

So McCullers tips his hand with all these stadium rumors: he wants better parking. Shawn Mitchell provides the softball questions.

Honestly, it reads like the whole thing was written by the Crew FO and the questions are just polite fiction.

 

"A roof is not an immediate priority, but we'd like to have LED (lighting) in the building and a true club area in the building."

It's true. I'll NEVER go to another Crew game until there is LED lighting.

 

Re: McCullers/Stadium Q&A

I liked the "rut-filled, up-to-my-ankles-in-mud type of experience" quote. Look like McCuller has read some of the parking lot posts.

 

McCuller's "tips his hand"? Questions are "polite fiction"?? I honestly, swear to God, have no Earthly idea what any of that means. Leave the silly twaddle aside and make a statement, if you have one. I doubt anyone but Mitchell asked the questions, and people need to hear those answers.

A good interviewer gives his subject the chance to say what he wants to say. Mitchell did this. He clearly knows - it's hardly a secret - that the Crew and it's fans are increasingly angry about the parking and traffic situation, which was understandable, even tolerable, for the first few years but has now gone past anything acceptable by a rational business.

HSG pays the state $50,000 a year in rent for that land; in nine years, that's (obviously) $450,000. Add in five bucks for every single car that has passed through the gates and the Fairgrounds people have easily cleared a million bucks on this deal. Pure profit, no expenses, didn't lift a finger found money.

And they've spent it on everything BUT some basic damn improvements. It's a scandal and a disgrace. Improving the goddam cow and swine barns with that money is shortsighted and, frankly, insulting.

And the City of Coulmbus and the State have done exaclt squat about the horrible traffic situation. To get out of a Crew game means having to sit in a half-hour traffic jam slowly snaking it's way down narrow residential low-rent streets.

Even if you come and have a great game experience, parking in mud and ruts and then creeping through the slums to get out makes it a lousy experience. McCullers is trying to run a business here, and business is about image and the Crew's image stinks when you force your customers into this crapola situation while the fatassed state fair political cronies put back nothing.

I'd tell Columbus to go screw itself. From Day One they've given the Crew nothing but lip service and the back of their hands. If Delaware or Newark is willing to step up to the bar, then I say let 'em. The City and the State will find owning that big galvanized pile of tin to be a pain in the ass without a tenant.

 

YEAH! Stick it to the man! You tell 'em Archer!



I do agree that the city/state side of all of this is totally FUBAR'ed and they're playing their hand right out of easy income. Hey, they're loss. I just hope the Crew doesn't get punished by the crowds in the long run if there were to be a move away from that site.

 

Softballs that McCullers hit out of the park!

I'm in the 'Amen! corner'.

How about thinking a bit and realizing that if Mc had said any more he would have pissed off the whole Columbus establishment.

I dont begrudge the fair board anything they've made off us, so far.. they took a chance, however slight, and gave us a home, but it's time for the state and city to fish or cut bait.

It's to the city's benefit to upgrade the facilities. I suppose they all thought it would continue apace after the retail block was developed and all they'd have to do was sit back and collect taxes but they should notice nothing new has gone into the area since.

Without changes and upgrades, the stadium itself is on the way from 'shiny new' to an eyesore. If Columbus thinks they can concentrate everything in the downtown arena district, they're shortsighted as hell... and might as well be Canton or Akron.

As to the parking area upgrades, though, I can see the fair board's dilemma... if they do it for us, and the stadium is cosmetically improved, then that will be the only really nice part of the whole property and the pressure will be put on them to freshen up everything south of 17th..

 

Sunbury, tho unlikely to win (are they still in the running) would actually probably be a better choice than Delaware or Newark, ironically. You could plop a stadium and training facility down on 36/37, a mile or two off of I71. That's only a exit or two past Polaris, IIRC, and it's pretty wide open.

It'd make it easier for me, at least once I move to my farm in Harlem Township. It's in Sunbury's school district. I could be at the stadium in 10 minutes, no highway. Schwing!

 

All I'm saying is that this is the most immaculately crafted, rhetorically sound public statement of import to come out of the Crew in a long time. When Mitchell asks things like ". . . the proposal the city of Columbus made was not impressive. Did that disappoint you?" it is pretty clear that the answer is "yes" and that sentiment is coming straight from the Crew. If Mitchell's goal was to give the Crew a straight up platform to throw out their beef with the city, county and state, that's fine, he did a good job of not getting in the way. But this is also a team that's struggled for coverage in the Dispatch for years.

The article's very rich in how much can be read between the lines. For example:

A more accurate reading is: "We would murder close family members to get a stadium on the riverfront near downtown, maybe even near that new park on the south side that used to be the impound lot. But neither city hall nor the county will pick up the phone when we call. We've even called from pay phones so they don't know it's us by looking at caller id, but they just hang up when they hear our voice."

I agree with what you're saying, Bill. It is vitally important that the Crew get this stuff out there, and they did a fantastic job today. Personally, I can't see anyone at the city or state waking up this morning, reading this and making infrastructure improvements a priority, but you never know.

 

Not sure what in my post implied that I didn't know that. And besides that, McCullers said more then enough. I can't imagine this article is going to elicit a lot of smiles downtown.

 

I disagree with that sentiment. I look at it a bit differently. The history surrounding Huntington Park is long and drawn out. I've been in this town for 11 years and I'm pretty sure they've been talking about a new Clippers Park for those 11 years. At first it was going in the Brewery District. Now its going in the Arena District, and those plans have been talked about for at least four, maybe even five years.

In other words...if we were going to go downtown, then we'd have a good long while to talk about how and when that would happen. It's not going to happen for at least five years after the conversation starts. And that conversation can't start until that Clippers park is finished, because until they throw a pitch down there I don't believe it will get built. Remember, it wasn't until Huntington ponied up naming rights that people even begun to believe it would happen. And that was in Feburary....of 2006. Have they broken ground yet?

The angle I take is more along the lines of...yes, we're serious about moving because we don't think the city/state is capable of getting a site together quickly enough for us....period. Heck they can't figure out parking at our current place or get the Clippers ballpark built on time...we can't trust them.

 

I think that's a good way of looking at it.

 

The way I read the article is similar to crewschmack.

McCullers may not make any friends in the corners of local and state government with this article, however, he makes specifically sure he doesn't call them to task, he doesn't assign blame, he doesn't say that they've been stonewalling them. In fact, he shows he's dead serious without pulling out the blatant "play nice with us or we'll take our ball and find a new home" kind of tantrums.

What McCullers does is he outlines very clearly why the current situation is unacceptable. He says he'd love to be able to have everything within the city and/or downtown proper. He outlines what kind of changes to the current situation would make them happy tenants of their current property, and he clearly says that the team have options, are listening to proposals from other neighboring areas, and put the city on fair notice that they can't philabuster around the topic for the next 5 years any longer.

It's a good move w/o burning any bridges with what we have to work with now, or with who we might be working with in the future.

 

What's his goal? The responses seemed to have a confused objective and lacked focus in terms of priorities. Did he want to bitch about the stadium or bitch about not getting a good proposal for training facilities.

The rfp that came from the Crew was an immediate non-starter for any community that is close in proximity to Columbus. It was an ask for a total one way give-away of $20m plus to the Crew. No elected body is going to spend that type of $$, especially with an organization that has not been very easy to work with, in business terms over the years.

If the early 2007 objective was to get a new training center, these latest statements seem to add confusion.

 

The article is a very nice way of taking the negotiations public. MM lays out the parameters that he sees as success, develops what he sees as the Crew's willingness to continue to develop and upgrade Hunt Park so the city sees he's serious about staying, identifies that the reality is the training site is going somewhere else, wakes up and gets the attention of the sluggish and insular administration of The City of Columbus.

By taking it public MM demands an answer and if he doesn't receive one from this that says a hell of a lot more than an actual answer might. In my opinion MM shows his usual style and skill as a negotiator.

The City of Columbus administration is notoriously difficult to deal with. They are loaded with professional city employees that spend very little time in their offices (meanwhile getting a very good wage) and when they are focused on their jobs they are focused solely on their on particular pet projects. Getting something done in C'bus is all about knowing someone and having curried favor with them over a long period of time. This is because you are going to have to talk to whoever you need to talk to on personal time because you will never catch them in their office. I'm not saying it's a poorly managed city because it isn't, you just have to know how things work.

The other option is to make such an ungodly stink that people have to listen to you (Bill Moss was the all time great at this tactic). MM has gone public with this discussion in the city's only major paper. The city will either have to respond by picking up a phone or not. If they don't than MM knows that The Crew is such a low priority to the city that discussions are not worth pursuing in all likelihood.

He also dangles out a very interesting carrot about moving downtown. I read it as we'll continue to improve our facility here but if the city is willing to work with us we will consider long term plans to bring another sporting/entertainment facility downtown.

An idea might be to take this discussion to the state level and try and do something there. Ted Strickland attended a game early this season when he had friends in from out-of-town who were soccer fans. He came in unannounced, bought tickets, and sat in the stands like an ordinary fan. This is a new administration in this state and one that is looking to create a new identity for Ohio and dig us out of the mess the Taft administration left us. Perhaps a creative Crew approach to the State administration could bring some money or other support the way of The Crew. Historically, there is friction between the state and local administration perhaps this could be parlayed by MM.

As a side note: One of the major problems with the move of Clipper stadium is that the team is owned by Franklin County. Which meant that the move of the team downtown and the investment in a new stadium had to be approved by the people and politico's of Franklin County before that could happen. It finally got through but it took a long time. The major problem here is that the yuppies and hipsters they hope to draw to it downtown might go for a year but they really aren't interested in minor league sports. The West and South siders that keep that team going are going to feel REALLY uncomfortable around those same yuppies and hipsters and are going to balk at paying $10 a game (which most can ill afford) to park their aging cars.

 

I would be real interested in seeing the numbers; how much they are losing in attendance per year due to poor parking and ingress/egress issues vs. cost of new stadium and where the break-even point is at assuming relocation of the stadium would increase attendance and bring in more non-Crew events.

Is parking in grass and mud an issue for the Fair or the Quarterhorse Congress?

It would be a damn shame if space downtown for the Clippers and the Crew sat undeveloped when businesses and attendees could benefit so much from it.

 

Its never taken me a half an hour to get out of Crew Stadium, 10 -15 minutes tops. Yeah, Mud is a pain, but get your kids to wash your car on Sundays rather than play thier damned video games. In essense, stop bitching.

As for Newark, I live in this little slice of heaven, and yes, I have internet, phone and even a little running water every other day. Though the Postal Service did stop mail delivery due to the Indians jumping the Res and scalping some settlers, but we out here are hearty people and used to it. I make the drive to Crew Stadium every saturday, and never once bitched about the distance I had to drive. Its kind of fun, trying to dodge all the bears that prowl the wilderness between Newark and the Capital City.

All that being said, Newark is NOT the place for a new stadium. Go with Delaware, or Sunbury, we'll take the practice fields if the Crew decides to build them here, but I love the crew more than this town, I want to see a full stadium every weekend. Columbus needs to man up, and get this job done.

 

I agree that the parking is shit, and something needs to be done about it, but I can't think of anything worse than moving the stadium away from a central location.

 

If we are talking long term to move the facility downtown then we are realistically running out of space to do so. I just did some Google Maps'ing and at least a couple (if not all of) the railroad lines would need to relocate to fit just the current stadium (no clubhouse, etc.). As more businesses go in there to take advantage of Nationwide Arena and surrounding facilities (to include Huntington Park in the future); available space for a soccer field disappears.

Personally, I don't see it ever happening. We were lucky to get investment from the Hunts to begin with and I don't see the state, Franklin county, the people of central Ohio, other potential investors, etc. working together to renovate the land for a 22 to 36 thousand seat stadium for primarily soccer-based income.

The only thing I could forsee possibly making it attractive to have a downtown stadium would be if rumors of a minor league for the NFL surfaces and starts to become attractive to investors. Having an existing stadium like Crew stadium or a nicer facility downtown could interest investors looking to field teams there.


Oh and I know we can't all do this, but; I enter on 17th, pay my $7, then make an immediate left turn and park on the paved lots far south of the stadium. It's a decent walk to the stadium but no mud, no mess, and for the past three years or so I've never spent more than ten minutes before I'm on 71 back home...

 

The problem is, people who live in outlying areas like Newark and Delaware are used to driving anywhere to do something in Columbus. So if you're a Delaware fan who loves the Columbus Crew, the name alone let's you know where you're gonna have to go.

But for all of us who who grew up with an outerbelt, 71, 70, 315, and 670, we're used to getting across town in 20-30 minutes max, especially on a weekend. If the team were to move out to Delaware or Newark, we're going to be asked to drive an hour or more to watch our hometown team play a game? In another city? Attendance from all your casual fans/OSU students/South of 70 fans goes bye-bye for all but the special games.

Out of curiosity, I'm late to the game in this discussion, was there a reason given why a Dublin or Hilliard or even Lewis Center didn't make a stronger bid for the Crew training grounds?

 

Actually the parking situation at Crew Stadium isn't that bad. All you have to do is park at Lowes