I really hate people who complain about parking. No matter what the event, what the location, people complain about parking. This is a chief symptom of "Ugly American" syndrome. JUST STAY HOME.
While I'm not a civil engineer - thank God - I have done enough improvements on rural properties to know one salient fact: just dumping a bunch of gravel will improve the parking for maybe a month or two before all the gravel gets pushed down into the mud, and then you're right back where you started. You can keep on dumping it year after year and eventually enough will build up down there that you'll have a firm base, but by then you've spent zillions on gravel (actually stone - gravel is tiny and would disappear even more quickly) The only thing that will solve the problem is the installation of a drainage system. Then you can pave or spread stone of whatever and everything will be fine. But as noted, the Ohio Exposition Board owns all of that. In fact, they also own the land the stadium itself sits on; Columbus Crew LLC pays $50,000 a year rent on the space it occupies. Asfor the parking fee, the Fair charges five bucks per car, and they employ the attendants (so the people you're complaining about are state employees, which explains a) the general incompetence and b) the fact that they don't give two shits how inconvenienced you are). As the event sponsor, you can have them charge more. Parking for a Crew game is seven bucks, with the Crew getting two. USSF games are always ten bucks and Sunil pockets the other five. So if you want to bitch about something, write to Gulati and tell him he has some big balls taking five bucks from you in return for having to park over by the Swine Barns and hike in. Do you honestly think that USSF needs to employ undercover agents to prowl the parking lots in order to determine that when it rains on dirt that mud is created? I mean, they're stupid but they're not THAT stupid. As for moving the game, I'm sure Mexico would be delighted.
I've been to numerous Soldier Field events including Man U vs. Bayern which was a complete sellout. You could still get out of the lot there within 20-30 minutes because they open up gates in both directions to get cars going out and they have ramps to flow pedestrians over and under the arteries that put cars back on the expressways. Columbus did neither. You can also get train or bus service to and from Soldier Field, and the walk from the Roosevelt Road CTA station isn't bad either. I wouldn't have bothered writing this if there had been a steady, but slow procession into or out of the lot. Instead there were points where we sat for 10 or 20 minutes without moving 100 yards, and that wasn't just after big downpours. So the prosecution rests with the comfort that this issue has been raised and rejected by the powers that be in Ohio, and with sympathy for those Crew fans who know that the situation sucks, but will probably continue without improvement. For those of you who can accept sh_t, eat it whole, and happily defend it, I can say now that I wouldn't have believed it beforehand if someone told me it existed, but now I've seen it with my own two eyes and it is real. And for those of you who don't think this game could be won just as easily in Foxboro, RFK, Soldier Field, or Rio Tinto, then you're believing in exactly the same silliness as what the Mexicans thought was going to break the streak last week with those ridiculous little voodoo dolls.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KcMTKCtZlQ"]YouTube - Gold Cup Final -USA vs Mexico June 24[/ame] All you need to know is in the first 17 seconds.
The mystery to me is that CCS is, as you know, built hard by a six lane interstate. The North entrance is easily accessible from Hudson Street, and the South entrance from 17th. Having been there myself well over 100 times, I am dead positive that with maybe a dozen cops directing traffic you could get a steady stream of cars out in two directions and onto I 71 with almost incredible ease. And of course once they get to either the Hudson or 17th exchange they can go either north or south and again with cops in the street overruling the lights the flow would be almost seamless. Flyer Fan did some numbers based on MLS figures and roughly estimates that the Ohio Expo Commission has pocketed over seven million dollars in prking revenues since CCS opened, and has spent exactly nothing on even rudimentray improvements. Crew management has been fighting them about this for years, but unfortunately nobody thought to mention any of this in the agreement with the state so whenever it comes up the board tells them to pound sand. It's enormously frustrating. I wouldn't argue the point for a single minute, but the real issue is not what you and I believe, but rather what the Mexicans believe. And I don't say this as someone with a vested interest in an Ohio match since I now mostly live in Eastern PA, seven hours away. There is hardly a suitable stadum in the country that isn't much closer either by road or air out of Philly. But that galvanized tin shed is undeniably in Mexico's head right now and it would be foolish to move it until that ceases to be the case. Anyway, while Sunil Gulati suppoedly considered bids from Seattle (as if that match was ever going to be played on plastic) and Rio Tinto (a wonderful, slick new joint) the bottom line was as much his psyche as anyone else's: The only safe thing for him to do was put it back in CBus. If he moved it and Mexico picked that match to suddenly get their act together and win, then it's Gulati who would catch a lot of the blame - irrationally perhaps, but that's exactly what would have happened. The same will apply in 2013, in spades. The only safe thing for any administrator is to put that match in CCS. The risk of being "blamed for the loss" regardless of how irrational that might be, is way, way more than anybody with sense is going to be willing to take.
If you don't show up 5 hours prior to kick off for the OSU-M*ch*g*n game, you are probably going to be parking in the next county. Hell, you've got to get there 4 hours early for Youngstown State, unless you're one of those rich folk who buy the hella-expensive spots within a half-mile of the stadium. (Those are the assholes who show up late and leave early.) As another rural property owner, I can also say that stone is (a) not cheap (at least, not as cheap as you might think, when you start thinking about large quantities), and (b) doesn't go nearly as far as you might expect. 50-100 truckloads would barely make a dent in the parking situation, even if the ground were properly prepped, and while the cost of that would be dwarfed by the $7m+ the fairgrounds has made on Crew parking, it's enough to make my hands sweat. We're adding stone every year (about a truckload) to repair a private drive that passes thru my property, and I was astonished at how many truckloads it took to lay down a base for our barn and riding arena. IIRC, you get about 20 tons per truck, and it'll cost maybe $3 per ton (depending on how far they need to haul it), which comes out to about $60/truckload. I think our barn/arena used 20-25 truckloads. It would probably cost $500k to convert all of that parking to gravel, if not more - not including site prep. Yes, I'd love it if the Fairgrounds did that, but they don't want to, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. Including "suspending" CCS as a venue.
Yet, despite that crowd advantage, we still won dos a uno! In fact, we're 9-0-2 in the last 11 matches on US soil, right?
It's posts like this that make me absolutely loathe MM10S because Rodneyd is proving what he says all the time....soccer fans, especially USSF fans, are the biggest pussies on the planet.
It ain't limited to just soccer fans, we Americans have become fickle people, wanting a hand out for anything and everything, thinking someone always owes us something. We bitch, just to bitch. I just wonder how we got to this point!
OK, I'm only halfway through reading this thread, but I'm going to interject here. I'm a season ticket holder in Columbus. So I had no problem. But if you think I'm going to schill for my city and my stadium, you're wrong. My sister, who's only been there once or twice, went to the match, and she missed the first 20 minutes of the game, and she's anything BUT a moron. Someone gave her some crappy directions, otherwise she'd have been there a half an hour earlier. But once she got going, she made it to the correct exit on the freeway at about 6:40 or 6:45, and still didn't make it to where she needed to be until minute 23. Now that might be understandable if you're going to, say, the 'Shoe, or the Rose Bowl, where you get six-figure crowds. But for a 22,000-seat stadium? To be on the property twenty minutes before the scheduled kickoff (If you figure right at 7:00) and miss a quarter of the match? I'd be pissed off to an exponential degree too. Especially if I'd travelled a long way to get there. And with the weather being so bad (and people KNEW that in advance), there were a lot of people who didn't feel like coming two hours in advance and sitting in the rain and the wind, and so they chose to come close to match time. There's nothing wrong with that. And the fact that it turned into a complete disaster proves what we here locally have been saying for years -- drastic improvements need to be made. No, you can't control the weather, but you have to have a better plan than funnelling several thousand cars through a bottleneck into a parking lot that's fifteen minutes of walktime away. The original poster isn't alone in his outrage. But as usual, someone who's pissed off ended up dealing in complete overreaction. Parking being a complete nightmare at Crew Stadium isn't a regular occurrence. It's not even close. If it was, I'd be with him. But to say the joint should be banned from hosting future qualifyers is just lame. The atmosphere was still fantastic, and by the way... we beat Mexico, with a much more pro-U.S. crowd than we would have had in a lot of other places. I'm sorry you sat in the parking lot for a while. But: 2-0. 2-0. 2-0. You are the weakest link. Good-bye!
You know how long it took me to get to Dayton after the game? 1 Hour 30 min. With a 10 Min stop @ White Castle. You know why? I parked HERE
DAMN YOU. We won the game, I had a good time; but the whole time I was in Columbus I was jonesing for WC. I grew up with them. They don't have them here. And I didn't have a car in Columbus, and couldn't figure out a way to get them. And now I'm back home and regretting that I could get so close, and come away without a single slider. And you come on here and taunt me with your WC visit. DAMN YOU.
Those of you bitching about the parking situation (the weather was atypical, and while the lots can get muddy that might be the first time that they were actually closed) will be glad to hear that the State of Ohio has finally flung $5m at the problem and will begin parking lot improvements this fall that will take 2 years to complete. The Crew are lobbying for an earlier start date and much faster completion. http://www.dispatch.com/live/conten...3-27.ART_ART_03-27-09_C1_KTDCARH.html?sid=101 McCullers said the U.S.-Mexico game brought an estimated $3 million in revenue to Columbus and is worried the city is in danger of losing international games and high-profile Major League Soccer events. He said that the Crew has already lost part of its fan base because of the stadium's parking woes. "It shouldn't have taken nine years to address the situation and now, with the resources we have and regardless of the processes involved, we had a debacle with a major international event," he said. McCullers said he has been told the project could take up to two years to complete. "Waiting two years for the wheels of state government to turn is unacceptable." The Crew has enlisted the help of its friends in the state legislature and a lobbying firm to try to speed up the process. They will try to make state decision-makers aware of what happened during the World Cup qualifier and the ongoing concerns of Crew fans.
To make sure such a tragedy never again occurs: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou....008552,-83.016472&spn=0.041023,0.105743&z=13
Hey Jeremy and the rest of you who think I'm nuts!!! Look at what your GM said -- ""There are fans saying that our facility should be banned from hosting those types of matches until we have a suitable facility," Crew general manager Mark McCullers said. "Those fans aren't stupid and those fans aren't wrong. It's unfortunate that we have to have a situation like that occur to give urgency to something we've been trying to give urgency to for a very long time." I thnik that just about says it ALL! Maybe if you guys would have joined the "critics chorus" a few years ago, maybe the problem could have been solved before this year. It don't matter to me because I won't be back, but I do think that those who'll have my seat for the next WCQ deserve better than what I experienced, especially if their cost to view the game is over $100 per ticket.
1. He's not my GM 2. Just because he said you're not stupid doesn't make it true 3. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm glad you won't be back to CCS. Can you please start a boycott of all US games and of BigSoccer while you're at it?
Earth to Ohio, easy parking is a relic from a previous wasteful century. It's better to invest in mass transit!