Quote:
Originally Posted by electricron
True, suburbs have come through building pro sport facilities, but the central city participates almost everywhere too. So many facilities are located in the Central cities that the list would be smaller if we listed just the teams with homes in the suburbs.
San Francisco 49ers
California Angels
Anaheim Ducks
Texas Rangers
Dallas Cowboys
Miami Dolphins
Washington Redskins
NY Jets
NY Giants
New England Patriots
Soon to be Los Angeles Rams
Minnesota Wild in St.Paul*
*Would we consider Ft. Worth a suburb of Dallas?
That's 11 or 12 teams out of 122 teams, around 10%. That means the remaining 90% have homes in the central cities with the majority of them located in or very near to their central business districts.
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There are a couple more in the 'burbs.
Buffalo Bills (Orchard Park)
Arizona Cardinals (Glendale)
Detroit Pistons (Auburn Hills)
Florida Panthers (Sunrise)
Arizona Coyotes (Glendale)
For the sake of stadiums being in the metro central cities argument, I would definitely consider Minneapolis-St Paul, DFW, Tampa-St Petersburgh, and NYC-Queens-Brooklyn-Bronx being central cities.
That brings it to about 13% in the suburbs, so you point still stands. But there are a lot of stadiums that are outside of the CBDs.
For comparison, here are the MLS stadiums outside of the central cities:
Colorado Rapids (Commerce City)
New England Revolution (Foxborough)
New York Red Bulls (Harrison, NJ)
Real Salt Lake (Sandy)
LA Galaxy (Carson)
Philadelphia Union (Chester)
Chicago Fire (Bridgeview)
FC Dallas (Frisco)
So that is 8 out of 20 or 40% of the the MLS teams playing in the suburbs. This percentage should decrease though, as new teams are added, because of the leagues emphasis on expansion teams having downtown stadiums.
Personally, I favor stadiums being built as close to DT as possible, but being built into that environment in a way that encourages use 365 days of the year and compliments the surrounding areas. I might have said it here before (in my limited number of posts), but I really love the new Red Wings arena being built adjacent to the CBD of Detroit. The stadium will be surrounded by new mixed-use, including retail, office, hotel, residential and medical/education so there is guaranteed activity everyday. As a huge added bonus, the stadium will have a station for the new light rail down Woodward, right in front of the stadium, making for easy transportation options.
I think something like the Red Wings stadium would be an awesome use of the Statesman property. I think you could make it work with a soccer stadium, which would also double as a great large concert venue. Adding a modern retractable roof, could really extend the usable time for the facility. Then, adding VMU development surrounding the stadium would get the needed density for that area and would create nice street interactions. Hopefully with functioning transit in the future for Riverside Dr, the stadium would be in perfect position to allow people to get to the facility without a car.