A really fortunate reversal for the District. Went from almost losing the Wizards at Capitol One Arena to moving all major league sports teams within District borders.
It always bothered me how the New York football teams are in the Meadowlands…
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The area is already subject to heavy gentrification. They converted the old city hospital to apartments, and even put up a new luxury apartment complex with retail/restaurants right across the street from DC’s central booking/jail. DC is not going to have trouble parcelling out this land for mixed use developments if the stadium deal falls through. So stadium deal or not, I think a lot of these older homeowners are going to feel some pain from redevelopment over there.
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Looking at the mockup of what the Commanders’ stadium could look like makes NY’s stadium underwhelming. It’s disappointing that MetLife Stadium isn’t as grand as other NFL stadiums like Sofi, Allegiant, Mercedes, U.S. Bank, and the new Nissan stadium. Especially when it’s serves the biggest metro area in the country. It seems too late for changes and too early for renovations.
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Good metaphor really as it so turns out the Giants and Jets owners are terrible at their jobs. They haven’t put an entertaining product out on the field in like a decade. Giants had one fluke season, that’s about it. The Coliseum design is decent enough for concerts and special outdoor events, but yeah a lot more striking and bold stadiums designs have been built and are in the process of being built.
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Which coliseum? The one in Hempstead where the Islanders used to play?
There’s one other thing that I notice with most of these new stadium developments: They aren’t surrounded by a sea of parking lots smack in the middle of nowhere. All of the other stadiums are relatively close to their respective cities. With the exception of Allegiant, most of these new developments incorporate other structures, entertainment and features that make them useful for other events outside of football (or whatever sport they are used for) and aren’t surrounded by a sea of parking lots. MetLife is in the middle of a swamp and transit access was an afterthought (the station that is there isn’t even open all the time despite being by a mall).
Look at all that parking that could otherwise be something else more useful.
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Isn’t the new Buffalo Bills stadium also going to be surrounded by parking lots, just like the Dallas Cowboys and Las Vegas Raiders stadiums?
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The Bills stadium is going to be surrounded by a sea of asphalt and like Metlife, is in the middle of nowhere, quite far from the actual city the team calls home. My comment didn’t specify all new stadiums are surrounded but a decent number aren’t which is a welcome change. I’m also not surprised that anything in Texas or Las Vegas is surrounded by parking it: those places are allergic to anything that isn’t car dependent
True. It just sad how bland MetLife is when you look at the new stadiums. Even when surrounded by a sea of parking lots, they could’ve made the design a bit more striking. Lucas Oil and AT&T stadium are arguably more appealing while also being in the middle of a parking lot.
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Considering both the Giants and Jets are among the top ten most valuable sports teams globally, one would expect them to splurge on something impressive.
If the Citifield casino plan doesn’t work out they should put the new NFL stadium there imo. With a good design and modern features, plus cool stuff on the outside. Like SoFi stadium has an awesome park outside of it
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That’d be excellent since there’s the 7 train and LIRR which greatly expands transit options. All the parking can be moved to like one or two parking decks and the rest of that huge space would otherwise go to more productive use.
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This isn’t a coincidence btw
In grad school, I wrote a research paper examining US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis to understand how it impacted the surrounding neighborhood. You can look at google streetview (switching between current and past dates) to see how gentrified the area got over a decade.
One of the reasons for that is NFL team owners have begun buying up the cheapest available land in major metro areas (usually old industrial sites) and developing “stadium districts” which they own and then rent out as luxury apartments and retail.
They effectively become the private landlords of an entire neighborhood and make most of their annual income from lease revenue as opposed to any football related sales.
It’s kind of like how McDonald’s is a land leasing company first and a burger selling business second. NFL owners are just wising up to the same scheme
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