MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[Dilbert]

Huntsville recently converted their old baseball stadium to soccer and it looks great.

[TBGKon]

Huntsville was already an interesting structure to begin with, as pre-renovation it was already used for football too.  The bones for soccer were there, they just closed in the outfield with new seats.

 

[Walk-Off]

Athletics Nation: Manfred urges A’s to finalize interim stadium plans in “next few months”

[Fowler2]

Somebody needs to talk Fisher into selling. 

[The_Admiral]

18 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Oakland has some real nasty parts, but it’s still just like any other major American city. I’ve been to Oakland like six times in the past year and it was fine. Fun, actually. Good food scene there if you know where to look, and just as much to do as any other city (probably more weed stores, though). Theres just certain parts of the city you know not to around in, especially after dark. That’s increasingly true now, but it’s always been the case with Oakland. 

 

Hasn't San Francisco become Poop City? No one's saying the Giants should move. Bay Area income inequality is really something else.

 

I'm not really wowed by the Sox stadium. I'm a traditionalist, and the Sox have played on 35th Street for 115 years. I don't really want that to change. 

[SFGiants58]

On 2/8/2024 at 2:20 PM, Walk-Off said:

Athletics Nation: Manfred urges A’s to finalize interim stadium plans in “next few months”

 

 

Overused, but perfect.

[Fowler2]

Hey, would a new Bears stadium fit where New Comiskey now sits or do the Bears just want to be the suburbs? 

[GDAWG]

3 minutes ago, BottomlessPitt said:

Hey, would a new Bears stadium fit where New Comiskey now sits or do the Bears just want to be the suburbs? 

 

Bears are considering a stadium across the street from Soldier Field.  

[The_Admiral]

6 hours ago, BottomlessPitt said:

Hey, would a new Bears stadium fit where New Comiskey now sits or do the Bears just want to be the suburbs? 

There's so much surface parking around Comiskey that anything could fit there, but the Bears in Bridgeport and the Sox downtown is like some Gift of the Magi deal. 

[Sykotyk]

6 hours ago, GDAWG said:

 

Bears are considering a stadium across the street from Soldier Field.  

Isn't the big knock against the Soldier Field area the lack of 'mixed-use development' they all love so much now? That and parking is minimal?

[The_Admiral]

38 minutes ago, Sykotyk said:

Isn't the big knock against the Soldier Field area the lack of 'mixed-use development' they all love so much now? That and parking is minimal?

 

1. Too hard to drive to from the suburbs

2. Too hard to walk to from train stations

3. The Blacks

4. Not enough parking

 

1 will be a problem anywhere on the map; anything that requires tens of thousands of people to drive in and out of a spot at the same time is going to be a giant pain, especially in an area as sprawling as Chicagoland. 2, not much anyone can do about that one; the rail system has been all but set in stone since the 19th century. 3, it's really more the idea of them than anything given the atomized nature of driving to the game. 4, I dunno, take a shuttle bus and forgo eating potato salad in a parking lot, you rubes. 

 

Arlington Heights would solve 3 and 4, but make 1 considerably worse, and 2 is irrelevant to most people, and the whole development appears to be a moot point since the Bears tried to big-dick Cook County and lost badly. Roosevelt/Clark where the Sox want to go (who also don't seem to have the money) would fix 2, but the rest would be about the same. There's just no perfect place to put a stadium here that I can think of, but at least we know the lakefront works well enough.

[OnWis97]

10 hours ago, The_Admiral said:

 

1. Too hard to drive to from the suburbs

2. Too hard to walk to from train stations

3. The Blacks

4. Not enough parking

 

1 will be a problem anywhere on the map; anything that requires tens of thousands of people to drive in and out of a spot at the same time is going to be a giant pain, especially in an area as sprawling as Chicagoland. 2, not much anyone can do about that one; the rail system has been all but set in stone since the 19th century. 3, it's really more the idea of them than anything given the atomized nature of driving to the game. 4, I dunno, take a shuttle bus and forgo eating potato salad in a parking lot, you rubes. 

 

Arlington Heights would solve 3 and 4, but make 1 considerably worse, and 2 is irrelevant to most people, and the whole development appears to be a moot point since the Bears tried to big-dick Cook County and lost badly. Roosevelt/Clark where the Sox want to go (who also don't seem to have the money) would fix 2, but the rest would be about the same. There's just no perfect place to put a stadium here that I can think of, but at least we know the lakefront works well enough.

But the perception among the suburban fanbase would be that it's better. I could see that helping the suburban cause.

[The_Admiral]

7 hours ago, OnWis97 said:

But the perception among the suburban fanbase would be that it's better. I could see that helping the suburban cause.

 

 

This is the approach to Arlington Park from the east. If you are coming from Evanston, Wilmette,, Winnetka, or thereabouts, where season ticketholders are likely to live because Bears tickets are expensive, this is the road that you would probably take to get there. It's a medium/heavy arterial from the North Shore to here but two lanes most of the way through downtown Arlington Heights to the track and the houses along it are old, big, or old and big, making it impossible to widen without pissing everyone off or destroying homes with historic markers. I'm thinking of framing this picture because it's the first time since the pandemic that I've seen Euclid Avenue not backed up to hell at 4 in the afternoon. "Well, what about when the track was there?" Yeah, it was really chaotic and awful, and that was with crowds of like one-fifth the size.

[Walk-Off]

How high is the chance that the Cubs and fans thereof (especially Cubs fans in high places in the Chicago city and/or Cook County and/or Illinois state governments) will fight hard against government funding for a new ballpark for the White Sox?  Unless I am mistaken, Tom Ricketts and his family tried and failed to extract government funds for the "1060 Project" to renovate Wrigley Field and instead ended up spending their own money on the renovation.  Therefore, I can imagine that the Cubbies and many of their fans would be especially livid over the Pale Hose extracting any (let alone a lot of) taxpayer dollars to build a new home field in the South Loop or even renovate their existing venue on 35th Street.

[Fowler2]

35 minutes ago, The_Admiral said:

 

 

This is the approach to Arlington Park from the east. If you are coming from Evanston, Wilmette,, Winnetka, or thereabouts, where season ticketholders are likely to live because Bears tickets are expensive, this is the road that you would probably take to get there. It's a medium/heavy arterial from the North Shore to here but two lanes most of the way through downtown Arlington Heights to the track and the houses along it are old, big, or old and big, making it impossible to widen without pissing everyone off or destroying homes with historic markers. I'm thinking of framing this picture because it's the first time since the pandemic that I've seen Euclid Avenue not backed up to hell at 4 in the afternoon. "Well, what about when the track was there?" Yeah, it was really chaotic and awful, and that was with crowds of like one-fifth the size.

 

Reminds me of the neighborhoods that surround Lambeau. 

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, little bit, except instead of worshiping the Packers, Arlington Heights just worships itself.

[tBBP]

16 hours ago, The_Admiral said:

 

 

This is the approach to Arlington Park from the east. If you are coming from Evanston, Wilmette,, Winnetka, or thereabouts, where season ticketholders are likely to live because Bears tickets are expensive, this is the road that you would probably take to get there. It's a medium/heavy arterial from the North Shore to here but two lanes most of the way through downtown Arlington Heights to the track and the houses along it are old, big, or old and big, making it impossible to widen without pissing everyone off or destroying homes with historic markers. I'm thinking of framing this picture because it's the first time since the pandemic that I've seen Euclid Avenue not backed up to hell at 4 in the afternoon. "Well, what about when the track was there?" Yeah, it was really chaotic and awful, and that was with crowds of like one-fifth the size.

 

Fun fact: I actually took that route through Arlington Heights en route to setting up a mobile scanner at the Northwest Community Healthcare Center. Skinned a couple twigs off some of the trees in the process, and I'm sure some noticed the trail of leaves left behind in that scanner's wake. 

[The_Admiral]

9 minutes ago, tBBP said:

Fun fact: I actually took that route through Arlington Heights en route to setting up a mobile scanner at the Northwest Community Healthcare Center. 

 

I'm sorry. Your commemorative pin's in the mail.

 

 

I was talking to some people the other day about the surrounding infrastructure just generally not being up to the task and one guy kept coming back to the train station and how that would make it easier "for everyone." It occurred to me that people from the exurbs might actually not understand how trains work. I think they think the rail system is just a separate plane of expressways rather than something with fixed routes and schedules. That is, anywhere you've ever seen a train station, you can just take a left here and a right there and pull up in Rolling Meadows in time for the game. 

 

Maybe a Lincoln Yards stadium would have worked after all. I pass through there about once a month and it's still an industrial wasteland.

 

[The_Admiral]

Maybe this is me showing that I don't know how trains work, but if you can build a Metra station at the Roosevelt yard the same way there's one at its counterpart Western yard, then that grants access to everyone coming in on the south Union Station lines, which includes the all-important BNSF through southern DuPage, where, as I've said, Bears ticketholders tend to live. Could Amtrak make special stops there on gamedays? I don't want to get ahead of myself. Then you have a short trip on the Green Line for anyone coming to Union Station from the north end or from Ogilvie. Modest walk from Museum Campus for our Electric Line friends. 

 

The fact that government seems to be not letting Jerry Reinsdorf do whatever he wants makes me wonder if maybe they know Roosevelt/Clark is more necessary for the Bears than it is for the Sox.

[GhostOfNormMacdonald]

               On 2/7/2024 at 11:03 AM, OnWis97 said:  If I take everything I read at face value, most MLB teams need to flee their urban hellscapes.  The Twins, Mariners, Giants, Dodgers, and Cardinals, just to name a few, better get to the suburbs or roll the dice on smaller markets.                 Don't you know    thatMinneapolis is still burning and a war zone? At least that's what my relatives from outstate that only ever go to Fargo and Sioux Falls say.    I for one can corroborate. Please don't move here so the housing prices stay reasonable             Also,typing on mobile still isn't fixed? Lmao