MLB Stadium Saga: Oakland/Tampa Bay/Southside

[BBTV]

My friends and I go to a lot of baseball games after work, but I don't think we would if we couldn't (2 of us) take the subway straight down, (1 of us) walk an easy 2-mile walk), (1 of us) take the subway with a connection but still get from the NoLibs to stadiums in 20 mins.  If I had to drive at all, even if it was relatively convenient, I'd go to far fewer games (if any at all), because I don't like having even one weak-ass beer and driving, let alone dealing with traffic.  If it was a PiTA, there's no way I'd go to a game - probably even a WS game.  I think the stadium location and logistical issues are certainly completely valid points to be made about why it's failed, but there's not any evidence that shows that investing in a new park would pay dividends.  In conclusion, get rid of your cars.

[neo_prankster]

9 hours ago, ManillaToad said:

hearing rumors of the A's moving to Branson, Missouri

Are you sure they're not going to Bronson, Missouri?

[Sec19Row53]

2 hours ago, BBTV said:

[snip]  In conclusion, get rid of your cars.

Or, get out of the corridor in which you live and see that there are other ways to look at it.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

1 minute ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Or, get out of the corridor in which you live and see that there are other ways to look at it.

 

No, he's right. Our world is too dependent on automobiles at the detriment of our health.

 

I have a car and I chose the home I live that requires it; I just wish it weren't necessary. We waste a lot of time building highways and parking structures instead of more efficient transit. Especially to baseball and football stadiums.

[DEAD!]

That is probably why I am grateful the Blue Jays play where they are.

You can get there by subway (if you coming from the west end, I would recommend transferring to a streetcar at Spadina) . You get there by train from the west and east suburbs (lakeshore though) . Coming in from the northern suburbs might still be a P.i.t.A. 

I also liked going to the Giants game I went to because it was near the Cal Trans station (coming in from San Mateo)?

 

I have driven to downtown on game nights ( not to watch a game,  but for other errands). While it can be manageable to drive to and from the area during times when the Jays are not doing good, I had a not as fun experience in driving out after the 2016 wild card game.

 

The greater point is that, any planned sporting facility should have location and a mass transit component factored in the planning . 

[Sec19Row53]

8 hours ago, DEAD! said:

That is probably why I am grateful the Blue Jays play where they are.

You can get there by subway (if you coming from the west end, I would recommend transferring to a streetcar at Spadina) . You get there by train from the west and east suburbs (lakeshore though) . Coming in from the northern suburbs might still be a P.i.t.A. 

I also liked going to the Giants game I went to because it was near the Cal Trans station (coming in from San Mateo)?

 

I have driven to downtown on game nights ( not to watch a game,  but for other errands). While it can be manageable to drive to and from the area during times when the Jays are not doing good, I had a not as fun experience in driving out after the 2016 wild card game.

 

The greater point is that, any planned sporting facility should have location and a mass transit component factored in the planning . 

So where those things don't already exist, who pays for them? And why?

 

Four stadia in Wisconsin come to mind for this discussion. Lambeau Field, Camp Randall, American Family Filed, and Fiserv Forum. I *guess* I could drive to a park and ride a half mile from AmFam to catch a bus. But if I've driven that far, why not go the next half mile? I don't believe there's anything for Lambeau. If there is, how am I going to bring my grill and cooler to tailgate?

[sky1324]

If American cities weren't so aggressively anti-pedestrian this wouldn't be an issue. Stadia should be located in downtown locations, and if not, the teams should be on the hook for connecting them to public transportation. Car culture has made things so unnecessarily difficult to traverse without taking on the burden of owning a car.

 

Teams having public transportation connected to their stadiums makes it easier for people to go and also reduces the pollution created by the massive amount of cars traveling to the arena. Public transportation is always a worthwhile investment.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

11 minutes ago, QCS said:

If American cities weren't so aggressively anti-pedestrian this wouldn't be an issue. Stadia should be located in downtown locations, and if not, the teams should be on the hook for connecting them to public transportation. Car culture has made things so unnecessarily difficult to traverse without taking on the burden of owning a car.

 

Teams having public transportation connected to their stadiums makes it easier for people to go and also reduces the pollution created by the massive amount of cars traveling to the arena. Public transportation is always a worthwhile investment.

 

Right. It's always easy to find money for highways, but been forbid we want to move more people in less space.

 

I've driven to stadiums and taken shuttles or trains. I have never, ever regretted someone else having to figure out parking and getting me to the door.

 

And there are some contexts where mass transit works, and others where it doesn't. In Green Bay, you probably don't want to build a train to a stadium in low-rise area used ten times a year.

 

In Tampa, I don't know. The die is kind of cast for that metro area and nothing is really central. Maybe a monorail?

[DEAD!]

46 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:

So where those things don't already exist, who pays for them? And why?

 

Four stadia in Wisconsin come to mind for this discussion. Lambeau Field, Camp Randall, American Family Filed, and Fiserv Forum. I *guess* I could drive to a park and ride a half mile from AmFam to catch a bus. But if I've driven that far, why not go the next half mile? I don't believe there's anything for Lambeau. If there is, how am I going to bring my grill and cooler to tailgate?

 

Obviously, each situation is different. I don't expect a Green Bay to build a light rail system for Lambeau like I would for, say, New York.  It would be impractical for the other 300+ days of the year. I think what I was alluding to is the location of sports facilities should take into account how they can be best accessed from all areas of a metropolitan region. For me anyways, having some form of mass transit, even if you to drive to a station, makes a difference over if the ONLY option is a car. 

I can speak only for Toronto, but I have also been to other cities, like Boston, Washington, New York, Los Angeles,  and passed by areas where stadiums and arenas are located downtown and I happen to like the close proximity to mass transit at some those places. 

 

[SFGiants58]

I liked Coors Field’s location because I could get to it easily through a light rail route and walking. It’s only a five-ten minute walk from Union Station to Coors. Likewise, I’m glad it’s an easy commuter train or bus ride to Willie Mays Park when I’m in the Bay Area. When I lived in Portland, it was not difficult to find bus and light rail routes out to the Rose Garden. 
 

I was annoyed at how bus routes were the only public transit way to get to Miller Park and Bradley Center. Sure, bars in the city/neighboring cities did shuttles to Miller Park and the arenas (which I did for Miller, since I lived exactly one block from the arenas and had to put up with the construction closure of Juneau Ave), but it wasn’t the same. I’ll always support putting your stadiums in areas with public transit infrastructure in place. Likewise, building public transit infrastructure around a stadium site should be mandated if it doesn’t exist.  
 

Anything to avoid this dickery:

 

 

Richfield Coliseum, what a big oopsie. Nature reclaimed the site quickly after the demolition.

[dont care]

2 hours ago, QCS said:

If American cities weren't so aggressively anti-pedestrian this wouldn't be an issue. Stadia should be located in downtown locations, and if not, the teams should be on the hook for connecting them to public transportation. Car culture has made things so unnecessarily difficult to traverse without taking on the burden of owning a car.

 

Teams having public transportation connected to their stadiums makes it easier for people to go and also reduces the pollution created by the massive amount of cars traveling to the arena. Public transportation is always a worthwhile investment.

Stadiums still wouldn’t be down town, there is a reason why new stadiums aren’t built down town and it isn’t because of “car culture” it’s because they the amount of real estate they take up it’s not worth it.

[sky1324]

20 minutes ago, dont care said:

Stadiums still wouldn’t be down town, there is a reason why new stadiums aren’t built down town and it isn’t because of “car culture” it’s because they the amount of real estate they take up it’s not worth it.

Plenty of brand-new arenas are downtown. Just recently, the Warriors opened a brand-new arena in San Francisco, Atlanta's massive soccer and football stadium is very close to downtown (though not exactly), and teams generally recognize that the closer a stadium is to a population center, the better it will draw.

 

Car culture has directly led to the absurd suburban sprawl that America faces, which enables the placement of stadiums so far away from urban centers.

[Dilbert]

I think the stadiums should be downtown or as close to downtown as possible. Its like how MLS tried going out to the burbs for a while with Frisco, Commerce City, Bridgeview, and Chester. It just isnt the same and can be difficult to get to with public transportation.

[DEAD!]

With probably the exception of NFL stadiums, it is probably best that arenas and stadiums be built at urban areas. A few years back, I was driving or taking transit downtown once a week on a weeknight, and, while there was traffic, it was going generally against the rush-hour flow. I would have dread it if an arena or stadium was built at a suburb on the other side of town. I would be battling rush hour traffic from people that live on the other side of town. 

One thing I have noticed from some arenas is how some owners also decide to build a condo or retail tower beside the arena. 

I think a NFL stadium would be only exception because games generally happen on a weekend/once a week and it's treated more like going to an amusement park. Sure, any public transit is welcome and should provide "event schedule/rush hour"  level services, but, if the game is on a Sunday afternoon, you are probably going to be scheduling the whole day around the game anyways. 

 

[McCall]

On 5/29/2021 at 12:15 PM, ManillaToad said:

hearing rumors of the A's moving to Branson, Missouri

Waterfront stadium on Table Rock Lake? With the hills as a backdrop? Nice.

 

Although, (and I know this was a joke), the Springfield Cardinals would still outdraw the A's.

[OaklandIsBack]

On 5/25/2021 at 10:08 PM, FiddySicks said:

They planned on it originally, but the stability of the land (the stadium is right next to a river, hence the RiverCats name) came into question and nixed those plans. Access is pretty poor (everything is here, really), too. It’s also technically in an entirely different city (South Sacramento, CA), and that’s caused more problems for that site than they had originally foreseen. 
 

The feasibility of fully expanding that entire entire area has been done to death already and the answer for pretty much the last century is a pretty resounding no. One of the reasons it’s sat empty for no joke the last 100 years is because it was used as a defacto toxic waste dump site going WAY back. 

 

What about the old arena site? The foundation is already in place!

[Red Comet]

11 hours ago, DEAD! said:

With probably the exception of NFL stadiums, it is probably best that arenas and stadiums be built at urban areas. A few years back, I was driving or taking transit downtown once a week on a weeknight, and, while there was traffic, it was going generally against the rush-hour flow. I would have dread it if an arena or stadium was built at a suburb on the other side of town. I would be battling rush hour traffic from people that live on the other side of town. 

One thing I have noticed from some arenas is how some owners also decide to build a condo or retail tower beside the arena. 

I think a NFL stadium would be only exception because games generally happen on a weekend/once a week and it's treated more like going to an amusement park. Sure, any public transit is welcome and should provide "event schedule/rush hour"  level services, but, if the game is on a Sunday afternoon, you are probably going to be scheduling the whole day around the game anyways. 

 

I was about to say, anyone thinking you could plop a place like Lambeau, Gillette or Arrowhead in the middle of a downtown has a couple of screws loose. Baseball or hockey/basketball? Sure, as long as the city in question has the infrastructure to handle transportation of people to and from the game and there’s a decent nightlife to be had after the game. Some places, however, would be disastrous to have a downtown stadium right now. Like Kansas City as the only mass transit we currently have aside from the bus system is a 2 mile long streetcar from the River Market to the WWI Museum. Trying to get 30-40,000 (maybe more like 20-30,000 but still) people to a baseball stadium for 80 or so nights a year would be a disaster right now so naturally the idea is under consideration. 
 

Of course, as for the Rays right now? Looks like Nashville is back on the menu, boys. If this move does happen, my guess is that the Tigers or whatever the team in Cleveland is called by then and the relocated Rays would switch divisions. First they need a stadium, however. 

Edited May 31, 2021 by Red Comet

[mania]

On 5/24/2021 at 2:19 PM, Ridleylash said:

Honestly, though, I feel like this whole thing does more to discredit the location for the Trop over the actual support the region has for baseball. The Rays do well for a smaller-market team locally when it comes to viewership, so I don't think it's the overall region that's the problem here, necessarily.

 

I really, really wish this board would stop propogating this lie.

 

They don't.

 

They don't do as poorly as say, the Marlins, but they're not a top watched team by any metric.

[DukeofChutney]

1 hour ago, Red Comet said:

I was about to say, anyone thinking you could plop a place like Lambeau, Gillette or Arrowhead in the middle of a downtown has a couple of screws loose. Baseball or hockey/basketball? Sure, as long as the city in question has the infrastructure to handle transportation of people to and from the game and there’s a decent nightlife to be had after the game. Some places, however, would be disastrous to have a downtown stadium right now. Like Kansas City as the only mass transit we currently have aside from the bus system is a 2 mile long streetcar from the River Market to the WWI Museum. Trying to get 30-40,000 (maybe more like 20-30,000 but still) people to a baseball stadium for 80 or so nights a year would be a disaster right now so naturally the idea is under consideration. 
 

Of course, as for the Rays right now? Looks like Nashville is back on the menu, boys. If this move does happen, my guess is that the Tigers or whatever the team in Cleveland is called by then and the relocated Rays would switch divisions. First they need a stadium, however. 

Putting the Trop lease to one side for a moment - do they have any facility in the Nashville area for the Rays to move to in the mean time?

(Naturally, they do have time to build the stadium by the time the Rays can leave the Trop).

 

Geographically, Cleveland makes more sense as the team displaced for Nashville going to the Central. But, apart from logistics and division identity, I wouldn't be surprised if the Rays stayed in the East for the short term. Same would apply if they went to Montreal - the city works in either division. (Whether that makes it right, is a whole other matter! )

 

Pardon my limited knowledge on this, but could Detroit or Cleveland just refuse to move? Or does the league reserve the right to move a teams division?

 

[The_Admiral]

On 5/27/2021 at 2:05 PM, Sport said:

Let me ask, is 35 minutes a typical travel distance for Brewers fans or is that on the higher end? I feel like even situated where it is Miller Park is pretty centrally located.

 

More or less, yeah, unless you're coming from Here There Be Monsters territory, which a fair deal of Brewers fans are.

 

With Miller Park, the issue isn't location or traffic -- Milwaukee traffic has always struck me as rather light compared to what I've witnessed in Chicago -- but rather some absolutely horrific ingress/egress issues. That place has to have the worst parking lot bottlenecks east of Dodger Stadium. Getting out has been a miserable experience each time I've gone to a game there. That's where Milwaukee's lack of public transit hits you -- everyone drove to the game and they're all pretty much leaving at once.