Here's the thing with the stadium... It's fine. The parking lots are fine. The atmosphere is totally fine. Problem is, playing in Chester makes them irrelevant in the city's sports landscape. It's the same story with all mls teams that built outside city limits. Moving the team into the city would go a long way into gaining legitimacy in the public mind. But like others have stated, it doesn't seem realistic unless Lurie or Josh Harris etc buys the team.
Maybe, but most people consume sports via television and not in the stands, and (I think) more people live in the suburbs than in the city. It's a different sport, but Villanova (in the suburbs) gets at least as much attention (and probably more) than any of the four Big 5 teams within city limits. Because they have won two recent national championships. Winning fixes everything.
I disagree completely with that. When Villanova was winning national championships the question was " why doesn't Philly claim this" on every sports show
Hmm, that's a fair point. I guess I'm thinking more along the lines of televised games and people walking around wearing the logo. Maybe that's not a fair comparison because they could just be alumni and that doesn't really apply to MLS. But you're right about the arm's-length approach some Philadelphians take to Villanova. I stand by my "sports in the 21st century are consumed on television and not in the stands" though.
The people who play the “not in the city” card to ignore the Union just use that as a convenient excuse. If the Union actually ever moved into the city, then these people would just find some other excuse to ignore the team. Same with the media. Not to say Chester is perfect by any means, particularly on the public transit front. But I refuse to believe the Chester thing matters a lot to the people who legitimately want the club (and league and sport in this country) to succeed.
Philly is, and probably always will be, a driving town for a large chunk of the sports fans. Mass transit just isn't the easiest, or sometimes even cheapest, way to go for anyone that doesn't live in center city (or near the current sports complex). The sports complex is at most 25 minutes from me by car, so if you throw in 25 minutes worth of traffic I'm looking at 50 minutes. A ride on SEPTA is at a minimum 1 hour 10 minutes and I still need to drive 5 minutes to the station. And the ride on SEPTA is 5.25 each way on the weekend for rail plus a dollar (I think) each way for the subway. So just for me it is 12.50. I have three tickets so my group is looking at around 37.50 in fares. Even at Eagles prices for parking ($40) it is barely cheaper to take a much less effective method of transportation. And I'd say that is true for a lot of fans in the southern and western suburbs as well as a good number of people from Jersey. Now, I get that it is going to be people from the city that are more annoyed about mass transit. Considering that there is absolutely nowhere on a major transit line (subway or rail) in downtown or center city that has an open plat of land large enough for a stadium they are going to be in the same boat as they are now. The only place that will ever really work in Philly is the stadium complex because the infrastructure is already there. And you aren't building a new stadium there so you just end up paying rent at LFF. People need to ditch the whole Franklin Field thing. I see it come up every year or so. FF uses a non-traditional size track so the 400 meter circumference a track is sized (not the right word there I think) is done in lane 5 and not lane 1. A traditional 120 yard long field would, at best, be about 62 yards wide. The max width would be somewhere 67 yards with a field length of around 110. There is no amount of reworking that layout that doesn't involve removing at least 1 or 2 lanes of the track in order to get at least a 70 yard wide field in there. Even on the sidelines you'd need to remove the areas used for the non-running events of track and field. Basically in order to accommodate soccer you'd effectively prevent it from being able to hold its most prestigious event, the Penn Relays.
What I find really irritating about the public transit whinging is that there is a regional rail stop one mile from the stadium. I walked further than that to get from Newark Penn Station to RBA. The real problem is that the regional rail schedules are spartan at best and when they have run extras people don't take them anyway. There are about 4 million people in the region and the rail network just isn't that extensive, even to the city so transit just feels like an excuse to me. If you really want to go, Chester is not that big of a deal and its reasonably accessible for a large segment of the area. Inside the city the options are just extremely limited. Franklin field is never going to be a legitimate option, LFF puts the Union as the third choice tenant and awful field conditions during the summer mega concert season and once pointyball starts.I also don't know why anyone would even consider a purpose build stadium for the Union is even possible right now. Putting aside the astronomical cost, no Philly neighborhood with enough land will agree to it. South Philly isn't getting another one nor can I see any other area of the city giving a thumbs up. In addition to that, areas like Northern Liberties or where Temple wanted to build create access issues for a large swath of the region for the same reason Chester might present a problem, the regional rail schedule plus a subway ride.
There's a train that goes from Newark Penn to Harrison. The station is literally across the street from Red Bull Arena.
There is a legitimate excuse right now in that Highland Ave is not exactly a place that I'd recommend walking to and from. However, let's say that the Union and Chester actually get the whole development thing off the ground and it gets as far as 291. If you have enough cops along Highland to deter any issues then you have a walk that is comparable to Audi Field in DC. It is around 0.8 to 1 mile from both the Metro stops that are closest to it. So from a "it isn't close to mass transit" excuse that is bunk. Regional rail isn't great in most American cities with some notable exceptions like DC and NYC (there might be others but I'm not familiar enough with them to speak with any certainty). The biggest issue in Philly is that pretty much everything SEPTA runs regional rail on is something that was originally built prior 1890. The stops along the Media/Elwyn line are the same stops that were there when it was primarily a freight line that ran goods and such between small fairly isolated towns in the suburbs and the city. The regional rail line into Chester is one of 3 different rail lines run by competing companies back in late 1800's (the B&O line next to 95 is now the main freight line, the Philadelphia and Baltimore became the Amtrak/SEPTA line, and the Philadelphia and Reading line became the spur CSX line near the stadium). The stops were planned for the uses of the late 1800's and just aren't suited for the way the counties ended up growing. Elwyn station was there specifically to serve the Elwyn School (known then as the Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble Minded Children. Yeah, it was a different time) and for nothing else. It is the reason there is no parking for any of the stations. By the time SEPTA was formed in 1965 all those areas had already seen the population boom and houses and business were already formed. For reference here is a map from 1876 (pre-B&O being build) while here is one from 1889 (which shows pretty much all the rail that was ever built in Delco). Also, if you got 45 minutes, this randomly popped up in my youtube feed the other day. It is a good look into how SEPTA took a grand plan and basically almost killed off an entire service.
Great backstory about the history of SEPTA. That podcast was very interesting. My takeaway is that the Philadelphia Union is a metaphor for SEPTA: - It's founding was born from a place of political compromise for what to do with dated infrastructure (stadium location). - People had high hopes from day one, but it turned out to be a poorly-managed shit-show for the 1st 10 years (and counting!) of its existence. - Many of it's problems are due to a lack of $$$, and it has a history of crying poor. - It took way to long to build out essential infrastructure needed for it's day to day operations to run smoothly. - It runs on a disjointed and unpredictable schedule. - Has a history of disappointing and not delivering at critical moments when expectarions are high. - Its customers have come to learn to expect to be disappointed and underwhelmed, and look at the systems other cities have with envy, particularly those in Europe.
Many valid points. A lot of people want to live in a city, not own a car and be able to get around to events that appeal to them. That is the emerging demographic who just so happens to be more likely to appreciate soccer. Audi stadium will not benefit solely from the 250% population growth in Navy Yard but it helps. So do the bars and restaurants along with a walkable distance from the metro. I don’t know who built the stadium just before Camden Yards but there was a distinct change in perspective regarding what/where baseball stadiums should be going forward. Whoever built the last concrete monstrosity in a giant “nowhere” was probably unhappy. Chester will be one of the stadiums other cities point to when planning their new stadiums. Not only is it not easy to get to via any means of transportation but there is nothing to do there. Chicago is moving downtown for a reason. Location won’t solve all the ills but if you want sustainable attendance there should probably be some combination of parking, walking access, public transport and atmosphere. Chester has parking. If I were a billionaire I’d start a new team and work a deal with Penn or Drexel to build a joint stadium that the college team could use as well. College soccer is largely after the regular MLS season. The stadium would be all the things described above and would be something the city may partially support financially. Philly could support two teams. Map the population, find out what area is growing and put the team in a logical spot. It isn’t rocket science. Having one city team and one suburban team wouldn’t be a unique arrangement.
Yes but you can also walk. Oddly, the fact that the train stops there is still not enough for many RB fans who live in NYC.
Love the color here. There was parking up that way during the first season and the Union ran buses. I am positive that this could be done if people were serious about taking the train, but then the argument is time and convenience. I was not a huge fan of driving down there from SJ, but I did it because I loved going to games.
I've heard that the train to Red Bull Arena is not attractive to New Yorkers because of it's inconveniece to use as it is not part of the NYC Subway system, so it requires multiple transfers, a different fee/token system then they normally use, and it has limited capacity during games. I have no first hand experience with it, so I have no idea if this is true. Maybe we would embrace such options here, but New Yorkers are mass transit snobs since they have a much better subway system than we do here in Philly.
The current stadium was built because everyone involved saw a big chunk of free money that could only be used in Chester. If they didn't have that sack o' cash sitting there I bet philly would not have even gotten a team at that time. Anyway if they weren't going after that money then there were/are a ton of better spots to put a stadium.
Where? The only other possibilities ever discussed were Northern Liberties which I'm not sure would have ever been approved and comes with some access issues before you even come to cost and Rowan. South Philly will never agree to another stadium, especially now that the casino got shoved down its throat.
Not sure where to put this, or how accurate/true the figures are: Assuming all player passports are accurate, it appears 4 US teams earned solidarityDelco (PA) €120k (Zack Steffen) Philadelphia Union €47.02472k (Steffen and one other)Pittsburgh Riverhounds €13.333k (Steffen)NY Red Bulls €5.25k (Chris Gloster) #MLS #usl #RBNY #Union— Terence D. Brennan (@terryblaw) October 12, 2019
I just don't think they would have built a stadium there without that money and maybe they wouldn't have built one at all anywhere or even gotten a team yet. Also it seems pretty clear that Sugerman or whatever concern was involved was more interested in what they could develop real estate wise around the team/location and that probably limited any options they would consider anyway. Cost and politics aside Camden would have been a much better location than Chester. Well for me anyway
Yeah, of course for you. And it'd be much worse for me since it would like make my drive time 5 or 6 times higher. Honestly though, I'm not sure if Camden would be a whole lot better. The only place you could have done it there and maybe got people to go to is where Campbell's Field was. Of course that was still in use when the Union got a franchise so that is a no go. Anywhere else in Camden has a worse rep than Chester and the mass transit is only really going to work right at that location. And if I remember correctly part of the original ownership was the Buccini/Pollin Group that specialized in redevelopment and already owned the Wharf building (though it shows up now as them being a third party commercial manager of the building). The stadium deal came together right when packaging commercial development deals with stadiums were the big thing. It was right before the housing market crash and Bridgeview built Toyota Stadium, Red Bull Arena was built assuming they would build stuff around that, and Victor MacFarlane (a real estate developer) bought DC trying to use them as an anchor for developing Anacostia. It wasn't until the Houston Dynamo in 2011 that a stadium was built as a stand alone project near a city center in America. People like to say "if if if" on all these prior stadium deals but the current trend of downtown stadiums is only because of the stadiums that clubs were able to actual build beforehand and the continued viability of MLS.
I guess where the prison was could have worked. Yea I don't know how it would have worked out but there actually has been a lot of build up going on around that location mostly because of the tax breaks that just hasn't and probably isn't going to happen in Chester. Mostly because geographically its basically a cheap office park for Philly. Also it would have made "tailgating" at Monks more feasible.
Yeah. I'm an older millennial. All of my peers said that, too. Then they got married, had kids, and didn't want to send their kids to Philly public schools. Now they all live in the suburbs.
Younger millennials and the next few generations are going to do the same, just at a lower and slower rate.
They still move back to the suburbs, they just end up living with their parents again. FWIW I have done some interviews with companies in Camden and they sell the the live in the city work over the bridge lifestyle pretty hard to all the young(cheap) talent.
100% True. I work in Camden (probably at one of the companies you are talking about) it seems like well over 50% of the people in the building live in PA... a TON of the younger workers live in Philly and take Patco over or drive over from Philly neighborhoods... some of the older ones too. My team alone has 4 people who live in Philly proper. That said Camden itself is most definitely in the early stages of revitalization... much further along than Chester. Patco and crazy tax money/incentives help with that. There's much more to do in Camden than Chester at this point in time... without a doubt it's more attractive in 2019. Not that any of this matters.