Do sports stadiums really revitalize neighborhoods?

[mousquet]

By the way, here's the latest sizable arena that was recently built in greater Paris, namely in Nanterre nearby La Défense where there is a lot of development.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_...%A9fense_Arena

It was built for Racing 92, a rugby team of the French top 14. The neighborhood is still being redeveloped, very busy with construction as some part of extended La Défense, so we can't really tell about the effect of the stadium yet.

I personally find it too roomy (of course, its footprint has to be pretty large) for such a new district with a lot of things to come. I don't know how actually relevant it is over that area.
It is designed to host various events such as concerts, but the originally retractable roof was eventually canceled.

Otherwise, I don't think the Stade de France built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup in Saint-Denis ever had anything much to do with the redevelopment over there. The area was planned to host a bunch of contemporary campuses and businesses anyway.

I just guess an arena is useful when the team it hosts is successful, prestigious and draws many happy fans.
Other than that, it feels like a waste of room to me.

[Coldrsx]

Before

https://edmonton.skyrisecities.com/n...monton-ice-age

After



Is it this? No. Is it on its way, yes, but different and slower.

https://postmediaedmontonjournal2.fi...like-other.jpg

[thoughtcriminal]

Here is an article from yesterday saying that the Philadelphia 76ers want to leave the Wells Fargo Center in South Philly when their lease is up in 2031, and build their own arena at Penns Landing on the Delaware River front. https://www.inquirer.com/news/philad...-20200826.html
I don't think this is going to happen. Penns Landing is a notoriously difficult place to build. It is where grand urban planning ideas go to die. Traffic and transportation are nightmarish. A basketball arena would only make matters worse. And myriad other issues exist, too many to list here.
If they are going to leave the Wells Fargo and build their own arena, I would bet that they would move to Camden or somewhere near it in South Jersey. The team owners also own the Jersey Devils of the NHL, and seem to have a definite NJ bias. NJ has been without an NBA team since the Nets moved to Brooklyn. And there is a substantial fan base in Jersey for the Sixers. I don't think they would move the team to North Jersey and share the Devils' arena - I doubt even the New York area could support three NBA teams, and it would make no sense to leave the Philly area without a team at all.
But another possibility would be to build an arena in North Philly. The North Broad Street corridor is (or was, pre-Covid) heating up substantially. The renovated Met theater, the Divine Lorraine Hotel, and other developments all point to that section of town as being the next hot spot. Even better, they could build a bball arena on the site of what used to be Baker Bowl, where the Phillies played for 50 years, from 1887 to 1937. There is a subway station there and a regional rail train station (that has two train lines going through it). And they could share the arena with La Salle University, whose current arena is a glorified high school gym*. (Temple University already has a basketball arena, the Liacorous Center, on north Broad.)
But wherever they build, if at all, it should be part of a larger planning initiative. The arena itself will not itself bring about a neighborhood transformation.
*- it is a damn shame what the La Salle basketball team has been reduced to. When I went there in the late 1980s / early 1990s, they played at the Palestra and then the Civic Center. The Palestra is legendary, and the Civic Center was a beautiful arena. Ironically, I was on the team that built what replaced the Civic Center - the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine.

[mhays]

That sounds solid, except:
--Does La Salle want to be miles from their campus?
--You'd have to combine blocks, which tends to turn neighbors into opponents. That's just for a basic arena building.
--A reviving district could be overly dominated by events.

[thoughtcriminal]

Originally Posted by mhays

That sounds solid, except:
--Does La Salle want to be miles from their campus?

Their campus is in North Philly, in the Olney section, not far from that location, way closer than the Palestra and Civic Center were.

Originally Posted by mhays

--You'd have to combine blocks, which tends to turn neighbors into opponents. That's just for a basic arena building.

Nope. The block I'm talking about, at Broad and Lehigh, used to be the home of the Baker Bowl, which was a baseball stadium, which is bigger than a basketball arena. The site was probably consolidated back when the Phillies first played there in the 1880s. There is parking garage and gas station there now, which I'm sure could be purchased and demolished. But the site is fine for a basketball arena. There is a residential neighborhood nearby, though, and they might be opponents. That's the topic of this whole thread, though; whether stadiums and arenas improve neighborhoods. Again, I contend that arenas don't do it on their own, they have to be part of a larger development strategy.

Originally Posted by mhays

--A reviving district could be overly dominated by events.

Not sure what this means-?

[mhays]

You could cram an arena onto that site, but new ones are on larger sites than that -- today's arenas are generally on bigger sites than some of the old baseball parks. Realistically maybe if the railway was covered it would be a decent site.

Why are they so large? Because they want big concourses full of retail, so the building itself can easily start at 400x400 feet and potentially get higher. That's not counting plazas and street-facing retail. All to make money of course.

On my other point, neighborhood business districts (recovering or already healthy) find that game crowds can get in the way of everything else. This is a common discussion in cities without the Philly-type sports park.

[Coldrsx]

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