Downtown Baseball Stadium

Discussion about new sports facilities in Kansas City
brotherdarrell
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Re: Cordish projects in other cities

Post by brotherdarrell »

[quote="GRID"]
huh?  Ever been to Miller Park (Milwaukee), Dodger Stadium, Anaheim Stadium, Texas Rangers, Shea, U.S Cellular Field, McAfee Coliseum Oakland (I know, they might get a downtown park), Turner (Atlanta), Florida???  Stadiums surrounded by parking lots in an isolated location that you drive to with nothing around them.

Outside of Dodger Stadium (somewhat historic), the other stadiums on that list are terrible buildings and locations. 
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Re: Cordish projects in other cities

Post by LenexatoKCMO »

GRID wrote: huh?  Ever been to Miller Park (Milwaukee), Dodger Stadium, Anaheim Stadium, Texas Rangers, Shea, U.S Cellular Field, McAfee Coliseum Oakland (I know, they might get a downtown park), Turner (Atlanta), Florida???  Stadiums surrounded by parking lots in an isolated location that you drive to with nothing around them.
Miller Park - never been, may be an exception.  Chevez Ravine, Anaheim, Turner, and US Cellular all have big parking lots but are at least surrounded by reasonably dense neighborhoods.  I would also be rather surprised if LA and Anaheim are still playing in the same stadiums 10-15 years from now, those are awfully big revenue teams to be playing in such aged and outdated places.  Oakland, Shea, and Florida are all being replaced.  Oakland will get a better location and a ball park village, Florida is being relocated to the edge of Miami's central business district, and the replacement for Shea is getting a retail and entertainment component. 

Well I guess if it is still going to be good enough for milwaukee in a decade or so it will be good enough for us . . .  :(
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Re: Cordish projects in other cities

Post by FangKC »

I recall reading that the stadiums were placed in the Leeds District because they were financed by Jackson County, and to get the vote to pass, politics dictated putting them closer to eastern Jackson County.
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Re: Cordish projects in other cities

Post by Maitre D »

As someone who's been to 15 ballparks myself, GRID's post was so dead wrong that I find it even pointless to respond to it.  Nothing to do outside PITT-CLEVE-BALT?    How does one even respond to something that silly?


Then again, he's the guy who actually said: "A DT park would be nothing but a toy for JoCo."  Swear, he said it!
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Re: Cordish projects in other cities

Post by kcdcchef »

Maitre D wrote: As someone who's been to 15 ballparks myself, GRID's post was so dead wrong that I find it even pointless to respond to it.   Nothing to do outside PITT-CLEVE-BALT?     How does one even respond to something that silly?


Then again, he's the guy who actually said: "A DT park would be nothing but a toy for JoCo."  Swear, he said it!
well, with regards to pitt, there are less than 8 bars and restaurants anywhere near pnc and heinz, they are surrounded by garages and lots, and everyone walks across the bridges to their cars after the games and leave. does nothing to increase revenue for downtown businesses. i live in the cbd of pittsburgh, have a view of pnc from my living room, and watch it happen 91 times a year. everyone gets the fuck away from dt as soon as those games are over. the only business influx the bars and restaurants get is from university of pittsburgh stuff going on in the sports complex and other festivals in the parking lots that go on throughout the year. the subarbanites here are not much different than kansas citians, they get in their cars and flee.
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Re: Downtown ballpark and condos

Post by NDTeve »

after tailgating before and after the game.  8)
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Re: Cordish projects in other cities

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

Maitre D wrote: So why didn't we put the Sprint Center, P&L, or the PAC right next to it then?
Until the American Royal Assn nixed the idea they did consider putting the arena between the stadiums.  Reason: land was already available.
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Re: Cordish projects in other cities

Post by Maitre D »

aknowledgeableperson wrote: Until the American Royal Assn nixed the idea they did consider putting the arena between the stadiums.  Reason: land was already available.
That is ALWAYS kansas city's first criteria.  And it's exactly why we're behind other cities.
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Re: Cordish projects in other cities

Post by kcmetro »

kcdcchef wrote: well, with regards to pitt, there are less than 8 bars and restaurants anywhere near pnc and heinz
8 more than the TSC has.
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Re: Downtown ballpark and condos

Post by Downtowner »

While the idea of a downtown ballpark would have been nice, as witnessed by whats happened in St Louis, it's hardly spawning lots of restaurants and retail around their stadium - old or new. Most people go to a ball game and get in their car and go home. The Cardinals sold out their new ball park last year. And as this article by Bill Mclellan at the STL PD points out, restaurants aren't doing well around it:

But there was another message in my stroll around downtown. Fairness aside, Ballpark Village is a lousy idea. A retail center downtown? Three words: St. Louis Centre. I walked past that, too. It opened to great fanfare in 1985. It was going to revitalize downtown.

Perhaps the theory is that retail stores and restaurants will flourish because they are close to the ballpark. There is a problem with that thinking.

Before we built this new Busch Stadium, we had the old Busch Stadium. Restaurants and retail stores did not flourish around it. Moving the location of the ballpark one block south will hardly make a difference.

Truth is, people have known from Day One that Ballpark Village is a bad idea. That was obvious when the city made the owners of the Cardinals sign a guarantee that they would build the Village — or else there would be financial penalties. That was an ominous sign.

If a business idea is good, you don't need to negotiate guarantees and penalties. Business people act on good ideas. They put their own money into them.

If you have an ocean, you don't need to negotiate with businessmen to make sure they will build on oceanfront property. They just do it. For that matter, if we had a lake — Chouteau's Pond, for instance — entrepreneurs would bid against each other for waterfront property. The city would not have to negotiate guarantees and penalties to make sure that something was built.

Why did the city need to enter negotiations about Ballpark Village? Because the city and the Cardinal owners noticed the same thing. The old Busch Stadium had sat there for 40 years and nobody had opened a successful retail outlet in its vicinity. Had anybody put up condos? No. Restaurants? Well, Mike Shannon's and a couple of others catered to the ballpark crowd, but that was about it.
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Re: Downtown ballpark and condos

Post by warwickland »

Bill McClellan (even though hes from Chicago originally) sort of represents the old guard that is just bitter, and doesn't understand how they screwed up the city so bad above and beyond the inherent problems.

Anyway theres not a cohesive built environment around the ballpark, its urban renewal era single use concrete. All Bill needs to do is walk, or ride the subwayed metrolink a few blocks north to see the restaurants. The problem is, all the restauraunt spaces around the ballpark, what there are of them, really suck, and don't have continuous foot traffic like on Washington. Southern downtown St. Louis is not an urban environment, people drive in and eat, and drive out. Well, Chesterfield has restaurants where you can do that.

Bill McClellan is confused by his bitterness. You can see that in his line - "if we had a lake — Chouteau's Pond, for instance — entrepreneurs would bid against each other for waterfront property." He just doesn't understand simple urbanism...thus he acts like Washington avenue doesnt exist, because its not a nice-and -neat simple silver bullet project. Its "just" old fashioned urbanism. He will forever be entombed in 1975.

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Re: P&L District question

Post by 18th STreet »

aknowledgeableperson wrote: It is simple.
If downtown needed a baseball stadium in order for it to survive then that does not speak well of the future success of downtown.
downtown didn't need H&R Block to survive
downtown didn't need Commerce Bank to survive
downtown didn't need P&L to survive
downtown didn't need a renovated President Hotel to survive
downtown didn't need Dunn to survive
downtown didn't need Crown Center to survive
downtown didn't need renovating Union Station to survive
downtown doesn't need East Village to survive
downtown doesn't need GSA to survive
downtown doesn't need {insert EVERY single thing that is downtown here} to survive

You just don't get it. It's not about survival, it's about where the people are and what makes a great city. We have attractions for FUN and they make the city a great place to live. We also make huge investments in the attractions and owe it to ourselves to place them where they can interact BEST with all of the people. We need to stop building things in disparate neighborhoods for political purposes.

The fact that these things are downtown is what makes downtown what it is - the center of KC.
Where is your civic pride? KC's mentality to spread things out evenly in a political and wasteful way between neighborhoods is how this city died.

TSC is one of the single largest assets in KC. A baseball stadium which draws 20-30K eighty two times a year creates a vibrant atmosphere and should be near downtown where all of our attractions and urban synergy can interact.
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Re: Downtown ballpark and condos

Post by Maitre D »

18th Street, I nominate you for the post of the month.  Maybe the year.
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Re: Downtown ballpark and condos

Post by anniewarbucks »

The logic of placing retail and restaurants around a ballpark or an arena sounds good to maybe draw the crowds from the game into your establishment. But the truth is that for the most part the stadiums do a good job of feeding the people inside. With everything from sodas to pizzas these stadiums are becoming an all in one stop for entertainment and dining. A person could have an entire meal in the stadium and be too full to even want to eat at the Denny's or whatever else is across the street from the stadium. True the Power and Light District is doing quite well right out of the box and has done quite well even when there were no establishments even open the truth remains that other developments do not do so good. Look at how the Legends is doing by Kansas Speedway (the other big draw there is Nebraska Furniture Mart). As one poster said, the people drive to the event (some arriving late) watch the event, then go home (some leaving early if the team is not doing so good). Plus with ticket prices, gas prices and concession prices so high I do not think that the average event goer would have the money to go to a restaurant after the event. 
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Re: P&L District question

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

18th STreet wrote: It's not about survival, it's about where the people are and what makes a great city.

How can you not understand how the baseball stadium which draws 20-30K eighty two times a year to create a vibrant atmosphere should be downtown where all of our attractions and urban synergy can interact? You are hopeless.
Other cities have stadiums that are not located downtown as pointed out by others and their downtowns seem to come alive.  And, yes, a stadium may draw a crowd for 81 dates but for the remaining 284 days of the year those four city blocks taken up by the stadium sits there like an empty building, doing nothing for the businesses around it.

Besides, I thought that the word "synergy" was dead, like "thinking outside the box" and "working smarter not harder".


The real issue was should taxpayers spend X amount of dollars to repair Royals Stadium or spend X++++ dollars to build new.  And if we build a new baseball stadium then we will probably spend ++++ dollars for a new football stadium since why should baseball get new and football get old.  That synergy (if there really is such a thing) you talk about would come with a very high price tag that Jackson County was not about to absorb.

As a side note, it was synergy, as well as business diversity, that got HR Block into the Option One mortgage business and look what that synergy got them.
I may be right.  I may be wrong.  But there is a lot of gray area in-between.
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Re: Downtown ballpark and condos

Post by GRID »

It's not just that when they are not in use, it's when they are in use.

Sure, it's busy as fuck at the bars and stuff right before and right after a game.  They tend to be dead as hell most other times, even during a game.

You see, stadiums (big stadiums like MLB and NFL) create such a parking demand and create so much congestion that regular customers stay away from them during games.  But while not in use, they tend to create so much dead space and empty parking lots that you actually lose a lot of the critical mass we all want at the sidewalk level.  It's very tough to build condos close to a ballpark because of the traffic and noise as well.  It sounds like a great idea to live across from a stadium till you try it.

I'm not saying that a downtown baseball stadium wouldn't have been awesome.  I would just freak out if KC built one.

But to say it would have been the turning point downtown is crazy.  The Sprint Center is perfect for downtown.  Large enough to generate a ton of traffic, but not so big it becomes disrupting both on game days and when there is no game.

It would have worked just fine downtown off to the side like at 18th and McGee or something where we could put the parking garages to the east of the stadium etc.

But.........

It was NEVER going to happen.  Even if that last JaCo tax did not pass, we would still not be building a new downtown baseball stadium.

Kauffman Stadium is just too popular among KC area residents and baseball fans.  Even at 35 years old, the stadium is nice and would be difficult to throw away like the other stadiums that were torn down across the country, we didn't have the ownership that was willing to pay enough for a new stadium, the Royals are tied to the Chiefs, the Chiefs and the Royals generate a ton of money from their little monopoly on parking and food, the TSC is important to many central and eastern Jackson County residents and businesses and they were not going to let it just go downtown and be another toy for JoCo at their expense.

We would have gotten another cheap 250 million dollar stadium.  I have been in all the stadiums.  They are like the Sprint Center.  They look cool, are in cool parts of town, but when you sit down in your seat that is 1/3 smaller, your knees are smashed up against the seat in front of you and you no longer have every seat in the house with a perfect view because of all the suites, the experience of the actual event you went to see goes down.  I guarantee you that people would have really, really missed the bowls of Kauffman and Arrowhead had we built new stadiums.  Instead we are putting as much into our stadiums as a lot of new stadiums cost to build.  We should end up with two of the nicest stadiums in both leagues.

Having said that, I would have given that up for a downtown park.  I think KC needed a downtown stadium for one reason.

To market the city, to show people that KC is an urban, big, cosmopolitan city with lots to do and see.  It would have changed the image of our city on a national scale.  KC has either no national image, the image that COPS gives us, or the image Kansas gives us.  I honestly think a downtown stadium would have given our city a brand new image, all its own.

But there was one problem, It wasn't going to happen.

So try to enjoy a renovated sports complex.  I think we will still have two of the nicest stadiums in the country.  It's not the best location by any stretch, but it's far from the worst too.

I just wish we could have done the roof and I wish we could find a way to clean up the general area around the TSC.  We have two new stadiums, the Sheraton has put nearly 100 million into their hotel and water park.  It's past time for KCMO/Jackson County/MoDot to put a little TLC into the area's infrastructure now.
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Re: Downtown ballpark and condos

Post by 18th STreet »

Dead Zone when not in use....
Then don't place it directly inside the loop, put it on the periphery where it can become a catalyst for residential development and still take advantage of being close to retail/entertainment. That way there's more land to develop residential and more customers living nearby to support the retail nearby inside the loop. Govt leadership should look at San Diego as the model for where and how to do baseball. The East Village neighborhood was very similar to KC's area just north of Childrens Mercy hospital. Immediately after Petco was built, the SD media was talking about how the neighborhood was still questionable. It was close enough to walk to the Gaslamp but slightly isolated from the rest of downtown/Horton Plaza. It only took a few years for every inch of land to be developed and the area has now become seamless.

This would also help connect the 18th & Vine District to The Crossroads.

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Re: Downtown ballpark and condos

Post by GRID »

I get that.  But again, what about the other issues that would have made it almost impossible to build a new stadium I mentioned?  I think we just had too much to overcome.

I guess we should have built a crappy multipurpose stadium like all the other cities did, then it would have been a no-brainer.  But then we would have missed out on a few decades of having one of the nicest stadiums in MLB.
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Re: Downtown ballpark and condos

Post by NDTeve »

but where would people park  :lol:
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Re: Downtown ballpark and condos

Post by PumpkinStalker »

I can't wait for that saying to grow old.
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