Stadium/Arena Saga Omnibus

[tigerslionspistonshabs]

26 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Yes they do. There's essentially no available stadium parking on game day. It's all annual passes at this point. Because of their location, some of these homes are able to charge the highest prices around.

 

Wow...that'd be a solid investment.

 

*checks realtor.com*

[tBBP]

1 hour ago, tigerslionspistonshabs said:

 

Wow...that'd be a solid investment.

 

*checks realtor.com*

 

Good luck with that one...you'll have an easier time prying a fish out of a shark's mouth.

 

On 7/26/2024 at 9:29 AM, Sec19Row53 said:

This was from 2006 or so. We would park at this house and tailgate in the back yard. It's been bought by the owner of the ESPN Milwaukee radio system, so we aren't there any more.  The stadium looks different now, but it's still right there. Most of the yards have that little 3 foot high chain link fence at their back, and then you're in the parking lot. The house next door with cars parked in it has a gate in its fence to make it easier to just get to the game.

 

I still remember the first time I saw that for myself back around 2013 or so. I thought it was both the weirdest and yet coolest things I've ever seen. I mean, you grow up somewhere down south, hearing and reading about all the nostalgia and history and tradition and whatnot about Green Bay and the Packers, but you have no frame of reference for the on-the-ground experience. I'd seen a few stadia, but it didn't prepare me for this. Mind you it was offseason the first time I went, but I remember just walking up to Lambeau, not realizing it was in a neighborhood that looked a lot like one of the ones I grew up in (read: lots and lots of otherwise nondescript one-story single-driveway houses), and then I got around to the backside of the lot and...backyards and fences. And that's for the houses that had backyard fences...some of them did not. So one could really just walk out their back door, stroll through their yard and roll right into the parking lot. 

 

Total sidebar, but the second time I went back it was in season, on like a Tuesday or something. I don't even remember what load I was on that had me up there, but I did the Hall of Fame and stadium tour that day...can you say WOW. All that memorabilia down there, Lombardi's office and whatnot, rolling up on the locker room while the team was in there (obviously the stadium guides wouldn't let us go in there), walking out on the field, then up in the stands....look, those of you who've not been down there to see all of what's in there, let me offer you a piece of advice: DO IT.

[Sec19Row53]

2 hours ago, tigerslionspistonshabs said:

 

Wow...that'd be a solid investment.

 

*checks realtor.com*

The Packers have been buying homes that aren't even listed for sale. The picture I showed earlier was one of three homes that were bought for around $1.1 million total. Two recent homes were bought and torn down and they were approaching that number individually. 

 

It really is a sight. Lambeau can be seen from a few miles away because the neighborhood it is in is just homes. It looms large, and the effect increases as you get closer.

 

https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/sports/nfl/packers/2024/07/11/green-bay-packers-continue-to-buy-land-around-lambeau-field/74338290007/

[RyanMcD29]

It's not quite the same effect as Lambeau, but Orchard Park's kinda funny like that too where you go one block north of US 20 and you're in a residential neighborhood. The block Ralph Wilson Stadium's on is pretty much on its own of just the stadium, the new stadium, and the parking lots but otherwise you got a suburban neighborhood in one block in any direction. The juxtaposition of driving 2 minutes from the stadium to the neighborhood Wegmans was kinda funny

[WestCoastBias]

Am I crazy? How does a 80k seat stadium surrounded by a parking lot fit nicely into a neighborhood of single family homes? 

 

Lambeau does not compare to ballparks that are actually part of neighborhoods with multi-family housing and transit where people live, work, and hang out even when there's not events going on. That is what St Petersburg appears to want to do with the new Rays stadium and good on them for going that route instead of doing what the Braves and Rangers have done, I hope it's a huge success.

[BBTV]

7 minutes ago, WestCoastBias said:

Am I crazy? How does a 80k seat stadium surrounded by a parking lot fit nicely into a neighborhood of single family homes? 

 

Lambeau does not compare to ballparks that are actually part of neighborhoods with multi-family housing and transit where people live, work, and hang out even when there's not events going on. That is what St Petersburg appears to want to do with the new Rays stadium and good on them for going that route instead of doing what the Braves and Rangers have done, I hope it's a huge success.

 

Remember, it was originally much smaller, and the league wasn't nearly as big in the '50s as it is now.  But even then, the area around the stadium was much different then than it is now:

When what is now Lambeau Field was built in 1957, the neighborhood was much different than today. It was surrounded by farm fields, including a farmhouse and barn in the stadium's west parking lot.

 

https://www.packers.com/news/sneak-preview-lambeau-field-neighborhood-very-different-back-then

 

 

So, what's wild is that as the stadium grew, so did the housing around it.  It wasn't that houses existed and a stadium was plopped there, but rather the opposite - something I didn't know until now.

 

I found this about its original size.  Doesn't seem too big:

"The concrete would include the first 60 rows of the sideline seats, or what today would be sections 111 to 127 on the east side and sections 112 to 128 on the west side. In the end zone, it would basically include the first 21 rows of sections 129 to 138 at the south end and sections 101 to 110 at the north end. The structural steel supporting those aboveground sections of the sideline seats also remains intact."  

 

Also, while yeah it's kinda crazy for most of us to think about, it's not that much different than what I'm sure a few of the big college stadiums are like - but I'm not 100% sure about that.

 

 

 

[WestCoastBias]

22 minutes ago, BBTV said:

 

Remember, it was originally much smaller, and the league wasn't nearly as big in the '50s as it is now.  But even then, the area around the stadium was much different then than it is now:

When what is now Lambeau Field was built in 1957, the neighborhood was much different than today. It was surrounded by farm fields, including a farmhouse and barn in the stadium's west parking lot.

 

https://www.packers.com/news/sneak-preview-lambeau-field-neighborhood-very-different-back-then

 

 

So, what's wild is that as the stadium grew, so did the housing around it.  It wasn't that houses existed and a stadium was plopped there, but rather the opposite - something I didn't know until now.

 

I found this about its original size.  Doesn't seem too big:

"The concrete would include the first 60 rows of the sideline seats, or what today would be sections 111 to 127 on the east side and sections 112 to 128 on the west side. In the end zone, it would basically include the first 21 rows of sections 129 to 138 at the south end and sections 101 to 110 at the north end. The structural steel supporting those aboveground sections of the sideline seats also remains intact."  

 

Also, while yeah it's kinda crazy for most of us to think about, it's not that much different than what I'm sure a few of the big college stadiums are like - but I'm not 100% sure about that.

 

 

 

 

College stadiums and Lambeau definitely have a lot in common. 

[Sec19Row53]

The seating bowl of those 60 rows is still intact. It was finally completed (that is 60 rows all around the stadium) for the 1968 season (IIRC).  The view that @BBTV posted has the north end zone on the right.  Here's an overhead view from Google maps that shows what it looks like 'now'. I-41 is to the far left of the photo. North is the top.

 

Here's a shot early in its lifetime. South is at the top of this photo. The house we used to tailgate at from that earlier photo is at the open lot next to what looks like a low, white roofed barn or storage building. The last white house on the far side of the street is one of the two in the article I linked earlier that was just bought for big bucks.

[Sec19Row53]

Under construction. As it says above, nothing around (north to the top - the press box is on the west side of the stadium -- you can see the framing of it):

[Digby]

In ye olden days, the original Foxboro Stadium (nee Schaffer) sort of had that effect, although the neighbors weren't quite as on top of the stadium as they are in Green Bay or Buffalo. But they were close enough that homeowners would charge $10 or $20 to let people park on their lawns. When Gillette opened up, the town select board also outlawed that practice, although actual businesses along Route 1 toward the stadium still get to charge a premium for private parking and obviously the rates have gone up. The slow expansion of Gillette's parking lots and its associated outdoor mall of boring shops have also dulled the effect of feeling plopped down in suburbia. 

 

Anyway, this all kind of proves the point though, that the ecosystem in and around a stadium for the 80k-capacity, 12 times a year-used NFL stadium is a very different thing than baseball stadiums or arenas (or, I guess, MLS stadiums) that can and should be used 2-4 times per week, and the surroundings will reflect that.

 

Thinking about this more, Denver is such a weird example of this, the way the NFL stadium, arena, amusement park and acres upon acres of parking lots bring such an abrupt end to the core of the city. Worse than the Philly situation due to where it's located. Coors Field, though, fits perfectly neatly into the neighborhood.

[The_Admiral]

Knowing it will never happen, just a purely hypothetical question: if the Patriots announced they were tearing some stuff down and building a new stadium in the city of Boston, how much of a "WHERE ARE WE SUPPOSED TO PARK?!?" freakout would there be?

[Sec19Row53]

1 hour ago, Digby said:

In ye olden days, the original Foxboro Stadium (nee Schaffer) sort of had that effect, although the neighbors weren't quite as on top of the stadium as they are in Green Bay or Buffalo. But they were close enough that homeowners would charge $10 or $20 to let people park on their lawns. When Gillette opened up, the town select board also outlawed that practice, although actual businesses along Route 1 toward the stadium still get to charge a premium for private parking and obviously the rates have gone up. The slow expansion of Gillette's parking lots and its associated outdoor mall of boring shops have also dulled the effect of feeling plopped down in suburbia. 

 

Anyway, this all kind of proves the point though, that the ecosystem in and around a stadium for the 80k-capacity, 12 times a year-used NFL stadium is a very different thing than baseball stadiums or arenas (or, I guess, MLS stadiums) that can and should be used 2-4 times per week, and the surroundings will reflect that.

 

Thinking about this more, Denver is such a weird example of this, the way the NFL stadium, arena, amusement park and acres upon acres of parking lots bring such an abrupt end to the core of the city. Worse than the Philly situation due to where it's located. Coors Field, though, fits perfectly neatly into the neighborhood.

Or, you build a successful development such that the stadium and its surroundings are used more than just on game day.

[Digby]

16 minutes ago, The_Admiral said:

Knowing it will never happen, just a purely hypothetical question: if the Patriots announced they were tearing some stuff down and building a new stadium in the city of Boston, how much of a "WHERE ARE WE SUPPOSED TO PARK?!?" freakout would there be?

 

There doesn't seem to be any definitive oral histories of that effort the way we got so many about the time the Patriots "almost" moved to Hartford. As I vaguely recall, because I was a dumb child at the time, the state plan was to have a Baltimore-style adjacency of football and baseball stadiums what eventually became the Seaport neighborhood, though it was nothing but parking lots in the 1990s so the parking lot culture would have survived. Obviously not happening nowadays. 

 

But your question also reminds me that there's supposedly an alternate universe where the Olympics kicked off in Boston last week, so we could have had this discussion about this thing:

 

[GhostOfNormMacdonald]

That's, uh, interesting. Unsure how to feel about the design

 

 

 

[kolob]

7 hours ago, GhostOfNormMacdonald said:

That's, uh, interesting. Unsure how to feel about the design

 

Eh. It only got to the "Fireworks Rendering Stage" so it would in the end you'd probably be looking at a very toned down Gillette Stadium 2.0. You only have to worry if it gets to the "Two-Dimensional Stock Photo Crowd Stage."

[Digby]

I kind of liked that look though it's very derivative of the Birds Nest in Beijing, I think.

 

When they pulled the plug they were still saying the Olympic Stadium would be temporary. I don't think it was ever even suggested that the Patriots would ever move there after the Games (I think it would have been a 10% capacity downgrade, anyway). There were rumblings it could be downsized to become the Revolution stadium but that was never formally part of the proposal, I don't think. 

 

Hard to imagine driving by that thing on 93. Instead it's going to be more train yards, now.

[gosioux76]

On 7/27/2024 at 3:38 PM, Sec19Row53 said:

The seating bowl of those 60 rows is still intact. It was finally completed (that is 60 rows all around the stadium) for the 1968 season (IIRC).  The view that @BBTV posted has the north end zone on the right.  Here's an overhead view from Google maps that shows what it looks like 'now'. I-41 is to the far left of the photo. North is the top.

 

Here's a shot early in its lifetime. South is at the top of this photo. The house we used to tailgate at from that earlier photo is at the open lot next to what looks like a low, white roofed barn or storage building. The last white house on the far side of the street is one of the two in the article I linked earlier that was just bought for big bucks.

 

This is all fascinating. Am I seeing this right? Was all that parking area cleared to make way for residential developments? Or is this bottom photo just a super tight angle and I'm not seeing the full scope of the housing from back then? 

[Sec19Row53]

13 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

 

This is all fascinating. Am I seeing this right? Was all that parking area cleared to make way for residential developments? Or is this bottom photo just a super tight angle and I'm not seeing the full scope of the housing from back then? 

The parking lot in the bottom photo has been filled in by some of the developments that the team has made as they've grown the stadium. To build up for the club seats and suites, they built out around the original seating bowl. They've added administrative buildings and a bar/party building within the parking lot.

 

There was no housing around it when it was originally built - the city of Green Bay and the village of Ashwaubenon grew to meet the stadium. The houses at the top of the bottom picture are on the street that I drew a red line on below. This gives a zoomed in view on Lambeau. The grassy areas to the lower left of Lambeau are properties that the Packers have bought and torn down in anticipation of further development by the team. To the west of the stadium (north is up on this picture), they've bought nearly all of that property and have developed it.

[gosioux76]

6 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:

The parking lot in the bottom photo has been filled in by some of the developments that the team has made as they've grown the stadium. To build up for the club seats and suites, they built out around the original seating bowl. They've added administrative buildings and a bar/party building within the parking lot.

 

There was no housing around it when it was originally built - the city of Green Bay and the village of Ashwaubenon grew to meet the stadium. The houses at the top of the bottom picture are on the street that I drew a red line on below. This gives a zoomed in view on Lambeau. The grassy areas to the lower left of Lambeau are properties that the Packers have bought and torn down in anticipation of further development by the team. To the west of the stadium (north is up on this picture), they've bought nearly all of that property and have developed it.

 

Huh. What's interesting to me is that the Packers seemed to give up significant amounts of surface parking to allow for increased residential density or other development.  It just seems like a really stark contrast to subsequent stadium developments that embraced the parking lot culture for tailgating. Compare that to Arrowhead in KC or Highmark in Buffalo, both of which exist within a sea of open concrete. 

 

I had always assumed that the residential areas pre-dated Lambeau. 

[Sec19Row53]

9 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

 

Huh. What's interesting to me is that the Packers seemed to give up significant amounts of surface parking to allow for increased residential density or other development.  It just seems like a really stark contrast to subsequent stadium developments that embraced the parking lot culture for tailgating. Compare that to Arrowhead in KC or Highmark in Buffalo, both of which exist within a sea of open concrete. 

 

I had always assumed that the residential areas pre-dated Lambeau. 

Sort of.

 

Up until 1994, the parking lot was just that - a parking lot. With the beginning of the re-development (and addition of suites and boxes), there wasn't room to park first due to construction equipment and then as the space got filled in with other things. The team recognized that getting $25 per car (or whatever it is these days) was far offset by making use of that space for year round use -- Pro Shop; restaurant, Atrium for private and public events, administrative offices, player parking structure, training space... When construction began, the team said to plan on finding parking for the next few years in the surrounding area. Most of us never went back to the lot at that point.

These three shots give a little sense of the build out of the lot. Even in 1997, the footprint of the stadium wasn't much more than it had been in 1957. That had totally changed by 2003. (FYI - N is up in 1957, lower left in 1997, and lower right in 2003 photos).

Sorry for the Lambeau-jack - I really should put all this in its own thread.