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Stadiums that should be renovated


StaatsBrett

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2 hours ago, the admiral said:

Probably best to tear it down. 65 years or whatever it's been, on and off, isn't a bad lifespan for a concrete donut. I don't know what the redevelopment opportunities are for federal land but maybe you can lure the Redskins back (if you even want them).

 

You (or at least not I) ever hear RFK mentioned with the other famous "concrete donut" stadiums (Riverfront, Three Rivers, the Vet (bring it back dammit), Busch, etc.)  I never even thought of it as such (probably because there was never football and baseball at the same time there during my lifetime until very recently) but it totally is.  I just checked and it was opened in 1961?  Doesn't that pre-date the other donuts by around 10 years?  It was a pioneer - the prototype for an entire generation of parks.

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44 minutes ago, dfwabel said:

Syracuse is planning to place a permanent roof over the Carrier Dome along with upgrades to make it ADA compliant.  As of now, they know the minimum cost, $255M, but no architect or contractor has been named, but it will be three  sepatate projects (in order):

1- Roof

2- Interior improvements with A/C

3- Exterior facelift

 

'Cuse does sell beer, so they could make money. I believe that the university has the liquor license as opposed to their food service contractor.

 

Bills better hope the roof is done before their project started.

 

As for UB, I'm not sure if they want those problems. No alcohol sold/allowed as of now.

 

I wonder if the AAA park could handle the Bills with temporary stands.

 

Just to allude to this, if the Bills were to renovate, they better not pair it with Syracuse's renovation because there's already some talk that they might have to move Syracuse football for a season so that it works around basketball.

 

Back in the 70's when Archbold Stadium was knocked down and the Carrier Dome was built, Syracuse played their home games at Ralph Wilson Stadium, the Meadowlands, and Cornell. I guess if that were to happen today, again thinking they get the project done by November for hoops, they could probably backload the home schedule and maybe do the FCS game at Cornell (granted they don't serve beer there like the Dome), and then split the remaining FBS games that couldn't be played due to renovation at Ralph Wilson and MetLife.

 

The big big issue would be if anything delays it for basketball. Football has those options for temporary homes. The lacrosse teams can just use the soccer stadium for a season. There's no venue that will hold anywhere close to what the Carrier Dome holds for basketball.

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3 hours ago, 4_tattoos said:

RFK Stadium in Washington DC needs renovation badly. After DC United moves into their own stadium next year some very serious decisions need to be made regarding RFK. It's looking more and more like the Redskins will in fact wait until their lease for FedEx Field expires in 2027 to move into a new stadium. The site of RFK is the only realistic stadium option within DC (the team has been giving more attention to potential sites in Northern Virginia). Even if the Redskins aren't involved, RFK needs either a total renovation or it needs to be demolished in order for a replacement to be built.

 

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Other than luring the NFL club to the site, what would be the point of building a new stadium?

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Honestly all they need to do is renovate and then make the seating more friendly to soccer and football  plus team USA can now play in a stadium that's in the capital 

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9 minutes ago, StaatsBrett said:

Honestly all they need to do is renovate and then make the seating more friendly to soccer and football  plus team USA can now play in a stadium that's in the capital 

Does it really have the bones to renovate it into a soccer-specific? It's a big circle and hardly seems ideal for soccer as it is. What could you even leave in place?

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55 minutes ago, StaatsBrett said:

Honestly all they need to do is renovate and then make the seating more friendly to soccer and football  plus team USA can now play in a stadium that's in the capital 

I don't know if you can renovate every stadium. I would think a stadium like RFK would have a problem with infrastructure that would make it just as costly as building a new one which was part of the reason the Chargers couldn't renovate Qualcomm.

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13 hours ago, StaatsBrett said:

Honestly all they need to do is renovate and then make the seating more friendly to soccer and football  plus team USA can now play in a stadium that's in the capital 

DC United are already building a soccer specific stadium at Buzzard Point, near Nationals Park. Groundbreaking just happened last month. There's absolutely no need for a soccer specific stadium at RFK given that, and RFK wouldn't have been conducive to being an SSS anyway - it's a largely circular stadium with poor soccer sightlines from the lower deck.

 

RFK has served a very wide variety of purposes over the years - a baseball stadium for two franchises, an NFL stadium for 36 seasons, a soccer stadium for 3 different NASL franchises and in the MLS for over 2 decades. It was never great at any of those purpose, save perhaps for football, but it was the quintessential jack of all trades stadium. But the days of the jack of all trades multipurpose stadium are long gone - teams and fans both want purpose-built stadiums that are designed around their specific wants and needs.

 

RFK is obsolete for that exact reason. No NFL or soccer team is going to be interested in taking up residence in an outdated multipurpose stadium with few luxury suites or club seats, that is going to generate a fraction of the revenue that a modern purpose-built stadium will. It's why DC United are building a new stadium, and why when the Redskins finally do leave FedEx Field behind, it'll be for a brand new stadium. There's no money to be made at RFK as it is, and it'd require complete demolition and reconstruction to be viable.

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3 hours ago, kroywen said:

DC United are already building a soccer specific stadium at Buzzard Point, near Nationals Park. Groundbreaking just happened last month. There's absolutely no need for a soccer specific stadium at RFK given that, and RFK wouldn't have been conducive to being an SSS anyway - it's a largely circular stadium with poor soccer sightlines from the lower deck.

 

RFK has served a very wide variety of purposes over the years - a baseball stadium for two franchises, an NFL stadium for 36 seasons, a soccer stadium for 3 different NASL franchises and in the MLS for over 2 decades. It was never great at any of those purpose, save perhaps for football, but it was the quintessential jack of all trades stadium. But the days of the jack of all trades multipurpose stadium are long gone - teams and fans both want purpose-built stadiums that are designed around their specific wants and needs.

 

RFK is obsolete for that exact reason. No NFL or soccer team is going to be interested in taking up residence in an outdated multipurpose stadium with few luxury suites or club seats, that is going to generate a fraction of the revenue that a modern purpose-built stadium will. It's why DC United are building a new stadium, and why when the Redskins finally do leave FedEx Field behind, it'll be for a brand new stadium. There's no money to be made at RFK as it is, and it'd require complete demolition and reconstruction to be viable.

 

Exactly. Demolish it and build RFK II for the Redskins there. Make it soccer friendly too for Team USA. And, if they're smart put a roof on it for Super Bowls and Final Fours.

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Just now, kimball said:

 

Exactly. Demolish it and build RFK II for the Redskins there. Make it soccer friendly too for Team USA. And, if they're smart put a roof on it for Super Bowls and Final Fours.

 

I'm still angry that there wasn't a roof put on MetLife Stadium for that exact reason. They obviously wound up getting one Super Bowl (albeit controversailly) just by being a new stadium in the nation's most populous metro area, but MetLife will never enter the regular Super Bowl rotation, and will obviously never get a Final Four. Such a missed opportunity - an 80,000 seat stadium next to NYC with a retractable roof would've been head-and-shoulders the premier venue for big events in the United States.

 

RFK II with a retractable roof would probably be as close to a "national stadium" as America will ever see. The one issue with that site is that zoning laws prohibit the roof from being anything taller than the existing RFK roof, since it is on a direct sightline with the Capitol. Justifiably, of course. since no one wants to look at the Capitol from the National Mall and see a gigantic stadium roof lurking way in the background. So it might be impossible to build a retractable roof there, unless they were to dig deep in the ground and put the stadium field 75 ft+ beneath ground. As it is, RFK has a very low roof (for this exact reason) - there's virtually no way to facilitate a retractable roof on that site if the field were at or near ground level.

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16 hours ago, ltjets21 said:

I don't know if you can renovate every stadium. I would think a stadium like RFK would have a problem with infrastructure that would make it just as costly as building a new one which was part of the reason the Chargers couldn't renovate Qualcomm.

 

Agreed. RFK was the original concrete donut. It wasn't a particularly good baseball or football stadium. And it's not a good soccer stadium now due to the design. No amount of renovation can change the fact it's a giant circle that is ill suited for any major outdoor sport.

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It's a natural choice for the Islanders, really. Far better suited for hockey than Barclays (granted, that's about the lowest bar ever), located in the middle of their fanbase, and it can easily be brought up to NHL standards with some further updates.

 

There is apparently the ability to retrofit the Coliseum to add 2,000 more seats, which would bring it up to the same capacity as MTS Centre (15,000 seats), and only 750 seats or so short of Barclays (http://www.athleticbusiness.com/stadium-arena/ny-islanders-could-return-to-nassau-coliseum.html). And obviously sightlines would be considerably better.

 

For a team currently averaging 13,000 a game, going down from 15,750 seats to 15,000 or so isn't a major downgrade. Frankly, while I'd much prefer a Willets Point arena, a move to a "flexed up" 15,000-seat Nassau Coliseum permanently would make sense. And the Isles should jump over to Nassau on a temporary basis as soon as possible, while trying to strike an arena deal somewhere.

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7 hours ago, kimball said:

 

Exactly. Demolish it and build RFK II for the Redskins there. Make it soccer friendly too for Team USA. And, if they're smart put a roof on it for Super Bowls and Final Fours.

 Let's not forget WrestleMania. I'm legitimately surprised Verizon Center never hosted it prior to WWE exclusively holding the event at stadiums.

 

Oh.... I guess it would also be able to hold mega concerts year round with a retractable roof.

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On ‎3‎/‎30‎/‎2017 at 10:49 PM, Bmac said:

Other than luring the NFL club to the site, what would be the point of building a new stadium?

The Olympics. Seems like DC has been trying to make Olympic bids damn near since the year 2000. I personally don't want the Olympics to come to DC in my lifetime (or while I still reside in the area at least), but city leadership want$ to make it happen for $ome rea$on.

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20 minutes ago, kroywen said:

For a team currently averaging 13,000 a game, going down from 15,750 seats to 15,000 or so isn't a major downgrade. Frankly, while I'd much prefer a Willets Point arena, a move to a "flexed up" 15,000-seat Nassau Coliseum permanently would make sense. And the Isles should jump over to Nassau on a temporary basis as soon as possible, while trying to strike an arena deal somewhere.

They'd go from 100+ suites at Barclays to just 11 in Nassau (w/ the possibility to build out the west side). That's a lot of revenue to make up, even if you share with the Nets.

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22 hours ago, dfwabel said:

They'd go from 100+ suites at Barclays to just 11 in Nassau (w/ the possibility to build out the west side). That's a lot of revenue to make up, even if you share with the Nets.

If they were to stay at Nassau permanently, they'd need to build out the west side with an assortment of suites, obviously. 

 

In the short term? I don't think the Islanders are directly seeing those luxury suite sales at Barclays as it is. My understanding is that the Isles are receiving a $53.3M lump sum annually (on average), and that Barclays receives revenue from all ticket and suite sales. So the magic number of $53.3M - if the Isles can top that in ticket, sponsorships, suite, and concessions revenue combined at Nassau, they're in better shape than they are at Barclays. They'd need to build out the west side to a 15,000 capacity with 50+ luxury suites to hit that number, of course, but they probably have a much better shot of it in an upgraded Nassau Coliseum (and certainly in a new arena at Willets Point or Belmont) than they do at Barclays.

 

But it probably won't even be their decision to make. It's highly doubtful that the Isles are bringing in enough revenue to Barclays Center to make the lump sum payments worth it for Barclays, and arena management has said that using the Isles' 42 home dates for concerts and other shows would in fact be more profitable. The Isles are probably getting the boot from Barclays in 2019 regardless of whether Nassau Coliseum is more profitable for them. The 11 suites and 13,000 seats may have to do, at that point.

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On 3/30/2017 at 7:32 PM, 4_tattoos said:

RFK Stadium in Washington DC needs renovation badly. After DC United moves into their own stadium next year some very serious decisions need to be made regarding RFK. It's looking more and more like the Redskins will in fact wait until their lease for FedEx Field expires in 2027 to move into a new stadium. The site of RFK is the only realistic stadium option within DC (the team has been giving more attention to potential sites in Northern Virginia). Even if the Redskins aren't involved, RFK needs either a total renovation or it needs to be demolished in order for a replacement to be built.

 

blogs_citydesk_files_2016_01_rfk_stadium

 

I went to the US-Peru friendly at RFK last summer, which was probably my first visit in at least ten years.  It was in shockingly bad shape (ex., peeling paint, crumbling concrete, burgundy plastic seats that had faded to pink).  Separate from that, I forgot how cramped the concourses are and how few amenities the stadium has.

 

With that in mind, it would probably be exceedingly expensive to update it in a manner sufficient to bring it up to modern standards.  Even if that were to be done, I'm not sure what niche the stadium would fill.  The Washington area already has a baseball stadium and an 80,000 seat football stadium and will soon have a soccer-specific stadium.  A 50,000-55,000 seat stadium not designed exclusively for one sport would probably wind up being a white elephant.

 

On 3/30/2017 at 10:32 PM, BringBackTheVet said:

 

You (or at least not I) ever hear RFK mentioned with the other famous "concrete donut" stadiums (Riverfront, Three Rivers, the Vet (bring it back dammit), Busch, etc.)  I never even thought of it as such (probably because there was never football and baseball at the same time there during my lifetime until very recently) but it totally is.  I just checked and it was opened in 1961?  Doesn't that pre-date the other donuts by around 10 years?  It was a pioneer - the prototype for an entire generation of parks.

 

It was most definitely the pioneer, but your timeline is slightly off.  It was followed by Shea Stadium in 1964 and Oakland Coliseum in 1966, which were sort of like donuts with a bite taken out.  Busch Stadium also opened in 1966.  The other donuts then followed in the early 70s.

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