My good pals the Chicago Cubs lost a game to the Pittsburgh Pirates last evening in Pittsburgh, and as I was watching, I had a moment of clarity/grief regarding the Butler Shores proposal.
Virtually all of the MLS discussion grew out of the suspicion of sports as a business, but never really addressed sports as anything else. As cultural enrichment, or as community builder, or as architectural boon. Sports has the potential to do a lot of good things, but those good things were never any part of the discussion. In fact the talk was always about being hoodwinked (what untold Millions will PSV coerce us to give up without our knowledge?) or abandoned (how long till PSV leaves us, like it left Columbus?), never about how this is going to improve our city.
When I saw that view from PNC Park and how beautifully it showcases its city -- indeed, how much other buildings had to have been conscious of it when they were built -- it really pointed up how much a Butler Shores stadium would've beautified our city, and given it an iconic view. There're always problems to iron out with any site -- obviously traffic would've been probably the first of a few. But even with a mediocre stadium, that view alone would've been a defining Austin view, and would've been one of the first things a TV viewer would see of our city.
And a view is a view is a view, but it's one of the things that we didn't discuss. We talked a lot about the pros and cons (mostly cons) of losing our shoreline to a freeloading developer from out of town, but never about how a stadium could make it better.
Anyhow, McKalla Place is fine, and Austin needs a team, and it will be a good stadium, but we missed something monumental when we passed up Butler Shores . . . and have missed something monumental all along as we've been discussing it.