USA Today -Since 1989, every major league club save for the A’s
and Tampa Bay Rays have inhabited a new or significantly renovated
stadium. The Rays’ failed attempt at building in Tampa’s Ybor City aimed
for a ballpark with 28,000 seats; they have already reduced capacity at
Tropicana Field to 25,000.
The Atlanta Braves and
Texas Rangers, leaning significantly on public funding that came without
taxpayer referendums, ditched parks built in the 1990s for smaller digs
framed by the game’s new revenue engine – mixed-use developments at
least partially controlled by the team. The Braves are in their third
season at SunTrust Park (capacity, 41,000, replacing Turner Field’s
53,000) while the Rangers in 2020 will open Globe Life Field, a
retractable-roof facility that will seat 40,000 compared to its
predecessor’s 49,000-seat capacity.
1 comment:
This is interesting. In 2018 my city passed an "affordable housing" bill, that had all this strange language in the text about the city's port authority that didn't seem related to affordable housing. I found the port language in the text so troubling I decided to vote against affordable housing. I really wanted to vote for it, but I read the text of ballot measures before I vote, and often vote against when I see poison pills in a ballot measure. The measure passed without my support.
A couple of months after the ballot measure passed all this news comes out about some people trying to lure a MLB team to town, and build them a new stadium on port authority land. This is all starting to make sense finding out that other teams are doing mixed use stadiums. This doesn't improve my support for it, because inevitably the stadium will suck up taxpayer money meant for affordable housing. There is little to suggest a baseball team would be popular, the last local MLB farm team didn't even fill the aged stadium they used and moved when the soccer teams moved in. It's currently about a 3 hour drive to the nearest MLB team.
I am not a fan of baseball or soccer, but if the city is going to waste money on a new sports stadium, with the city mad for soccer, the local MLS and NWSL teams should get the new stadium. The local soccer teams are bursting at the seams in their 93 year old stadium. The MLS team has long waiting lists for season tickets and sells out every game. The NWSL team sets attendance records, which I expect will increase since 4 NWSL local team members played in the recent world cup win. A new soccer stadium would have a large and active fan base already in town and would use a new stadium to it's fullest, and would at least be serving an existing need in the city.
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