i was able to see Tigers stadium and Camden in Baltimore…seemed well nestled in Dowtown areas.
I haven’t said anything but that’s true publicly funded stadiums are a thing of the past. In Kansas City there fighting tooth and nail over a new Royals stadium, people don’t wanna pay for it. In Chicago, the White Sox are in a battle with not just the Bears but the Fire which is now putting a privately funded stadium on the 78 the same space they want there new stadium at. In other cities people are just saying no to it and you literally showed the receipts in this post it doesn’t benefit anyone. All I can see happening is the current fund they currently have which funded Lenovo Centers renovations that all the city and county could possibly give through that tourism tax find beverage fund whatever anything besides that I don’t see it.
I hear your perspective and if I just lived in a bubble and read those links, yes, I’d probably agree with you. But I’ve lived here since I was 10 years old. I’ve seen this little sleepy region turn into an east coast tech hub and become the 2nd fastest growing region in America. Have you ever stopped, and looked back to see how this happened?
RTP spurred this area’s growth with massive expansion in the early 90s…
IBM - Incentives
Burroughs Wellcome/Glaxo - Incentives
Chemstrand/Monsanto - Incentives
In fact, RTP being a thing at all was thanks to a public/private partnership. The state made it possible for the foundation to aquire 7k acres and facilitated the whole process. And their agreement that they would provide incentives to bring companies to that area.
Then the next round of growth was thanks to incentives as well…
Lenovo - Incentives
Novo Norodisk - Incentives
Fuji Film - Incentives
Bandwidth - Incentives
Fidelity (expansion) - Incentives
Apple (if they still come) - Incentives
And we could go on and on…
Even with sports and entertinment…
The ESA (Lenovo Center) was just about fully funded by the government and the Canes coming here only happened because there was an open stadium that was going to be NHL ready.
Heck, Walnut Creek Amphitheater was built using funds from The City of Raleigh in a public/private partnership. So all those concerts we all went to growing up, that venue was subsidized.
I think if we are being fair, incentives for economic development have made this area what it is. Without RTP there is no IBM/Glaxo/Chemstrand. Without those companies there is not the population growth, which along with incentives helped the next round of business growth, which brought more people, and more jobs and created the demand for more entertainment … which at the end of the day made this area one of the best places to live on the east coast.
So I just think, it’s a little inconsistant to live in this area, to be on this forum about growth and development, and then turn your nose up to economic development incentives as a general rule.
But we can agree to disagree…
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This is actually a study I read a few years back, and to me it’s not strong enough to change my mind.
First off, the majority of the study is too general as it’s aggregating NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB.
I believe NFL stadiums are the WORST deal in the game, and drastically pull down these studies that group together all sports to come up with a general narrative. 8 home games, bringing only 500k people to the stadium per season…all for a 70k seat stadium. No thanks.
There is no argument that ROI for tax money is most likely to happen in baseball where you have an average of 27k per game, 81 times per season. And then, you put that in the middle of a live/work/play entertainment district in the 2nd fastest growing region in America…and I’d argue you have a very good business model for creating revenue/tax money.
Again, I think that study you cited makes good points. And really tells me that the way we were doing stadiums was wrong. Throwing them in the middle of an uncontrollable downtown grid wasn’t a great plan.
However, if you put Atlanta’s Battery / Truist Park next to this study’s outcome, they’d bee seen as a massive outlier.
And my argument is…that is working, and that is the model we are going after. This is literally (and by that i mean, I heard him say it) what Dundon wants to replicate. It’s what the city of Raleigh is hoping for (hence the approval of the full build out around Lenovo) and why the city council / county commissioners trip was to Atlanta’s Battery last year.
So, again, I get what you’re saying as a general argument, but I don’t think those dated and generalized studies are a reason to be a hard no on something this big for the region.
I think a more solution based approach (How can we get something of this magnitude for the region while limiting the impact on the general population?). I believe that is the avenue for success.
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Preach, preacher! We already have NCMA, Carter Finley Stadium and Lenovo out in the middle of nowhere. Downtown won’t be able to keep up with the far outskirts portions of town if the MLB stadium is also put in the middle of nowhere. Save the farmland and build where density is nearby not small villages and towns far away from downtown.
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The ‘middle of nowhere’ area you describe happens to be the dead center X of the region when looking at the population radius
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I did like how the NCMA and State Fairgrounds seemed to be in the rural and more quiet part of town though but DHHS and Bandwidth ruined that.
The environmentalist in me just can’t support 10-40 story buildings or more “entertainment” around Lenovo. I don’t think Dundon wants the MLB stadium to be in this area anyway but yeah. We barely have any forested and rural areas in Raleigh’s boundaries anymore and this is partly why.
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Replacing surface parking with mixed use density seems like an environmental improvement. Turning Lenovo into another North hills is okay with me and any additional baseball stadium should only be approved IF they come up with a better transit plan.
(FYI, Dundon not Tepper)
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What do you expect to happen to Schenck forest and the edges of Umstead as a result of this?
They’re protected so they’re not going anywhere - but they certainly won’t be quite as serene and secluded as they once were. But that ship sailed when Bandwidth built their campus there, anyway.
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Protected like the portion of Umstead bought to expand the airports parking lots?
It’s my understanding (and someone correct me if I’m wrong) that the land used for that expansion was always owned by the airport authority. They just turned a blind eye to the people who built mountain bike trails there since they had no use for it at the time.
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I was referring to the parking lots closest to the airport not the Crabtree park area but yeah that was frustrating to see too.
I was also referring to the Parking 3 expansion on the north side of 40. The whole thing with the Lake Crabtree park still confuses me a little so I won’t speak to that, but the parking lot expansion is pretty cut and dry. The bike trails were on private property, and my coworker that used to use them made it seem like that was pretty well understood by everyone involved. The public had no right to that land, in the same way that I would have no right to use my neighbors back yard just because it didn’t seem like they were using it.
That land was in no sense “protected”, it was simply undeveloped.
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curious on this…is Royals stadium busting at the seams during games? can a few extra lux-boxes and some modernizing be sufficient?
was there a hiccup with Dell years back? if so i can understand apprehension. i think MLB in Raleigh would be great btw.
ease of Durham, Cary and Apex etc gettign to games? near Lenovo?
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50-page economic impact study on feasibility of MLB in NC (focusing on Raleigh and Charlotte) done by Dr. Michael Walden, a top economist at NC State was released last night.
Apparently, he’s done tons of these for the state/county/city for numerous projects over the years, and North Carolina actually uses ‘The Walden Model’ to model economic impact internally.
This study was conducted and funded independently by Walden himself.
He emailed us and told us he was doing this a month or so ago and explained his methodology, but yesterday was the first time we saw the final report…and as you’ll see. We loved it.
Summary of the Study:
Both Raleigh and Charlotte are feasible, but top-level numbers indicate Raleigh is the better market for MLB right now.
Link to in-depth summary:
FULL 50-PAGE STUDY: mlbncimpact.docx.pdf (1.4 MB)
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Dundon is buying the Portland Trail Blazers
Trying to not read into it but that’s a lot of money being used for our prospective MLB owner
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Dang this is kind of disappointing to see. Portland also vying for an MLB team, wonder if he’ll have his hands on that too.
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