Projects like this usually take a path of less resistance, and those that address complicated sites are often sites where few (if any) urban options remain. Raleigh has many more options compared to other cities. We aren’t landlocked, hampered by freeways, overly built-out, ultra dense, etc. It may feel like a city with no place to put a stadium, but that’s just not true. That said, I wouldn’t want to mess one bit with the railroads. It’s too much of a headache and could end up in cost overruns, delays, etc. That’s why I don’t think it’s a viable site.
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The Boylan Wye site has a lot of similarities to the Twins stadium site. The engineer in me can come up with solutions to each of the hurdles but very true that even though it can be done, doesn’t mean that it should. Wikipedia sounds like it took the Twins ~10 years even after settling on that site. Yikes.
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Oh, no, I totally get that and agree. That said, I think neighborhood groups are commonly overstated as an obstacle for these kinds of projects. History has shown time and time again that they’re not huge barriers for projects like this.
Random buildings, sure. Mega-aligned projects with a ton of stakeholders, no.
Tom Dundon, The North Carolina State Government, The MLB, and the City of Raleigh would not worried about the residents of Boylan Heights and Livable Raleigh in the slightest.
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Path of least resistance is spot on. No displacement or big residential impacts. Easy ingress/egress to major arteries. Ability to control surrounding area (parking/security/curation of businesses). Ability to attain land. Close to airport. Lots of parking Etc
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Bit of an aside but speaking of putting baseball stadiums in cities, I was working in San Francisco a couple of blocks away when they built that stadium. Due to the nature of the ground there + earthquakes they spent many months pounding still girders into the ground. Like maybe hundreds of them? BANG BANG BANG all day long. Good times. But I love that stadium and so glad they were able to site it there.
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I believe there is an interest to expand RUS in the future for the S-Line, commuter rail, and more frequent regional rail. I cannot see any type of future development in the Boylan Wye that isn’t rail related.
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We need more housing in that station’s immediate walk shed to enable and leverage regional heavy rail.
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I still prefer Downtown South site, but seems like their recent comments may give more clues to the ownership’s preferred site at the arena district. Not on the arena’s 81 acres, but close by on large parcel of land held by one entity favorable to the cause… the NC State football practice fields is big enough, close to the arena development, and all owned by the State of NC. Just would need NC State to build a new practice field - maybe in the wooded area?
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Oh I sure hope that this isn’t where it would end up.
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Mike, please say this isn’t true. This will spell a nail in the coffin for downtown Raleigh. Honestly, Raleigh is a microcosm of the current state of the United States. We shouldn’t allow idiocracy to rule us. Suburban sprawl makes 0 sense.
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A baseball stadium located at Lennovo Center complex does not equate to suburban sprawl
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Raleigh’s newspaper of record, the News & Observer, published an excellent article this morning about the effort to bring MLB to Raleigh. This is very well written, and I’m glad to see that the N&O is starting to follow this issue.
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I’d like for you to take a gander at Philadelphia’s sports complex. All 3 stadiums (NFL, MLB, and NBA/NHL) sit one after another on the outskirts of the city surrounded by a massive sea of parking. This, in Raleigh, would essentially be an improvement of that (since there will also be residential/office/dining/shopping development and parking decks). Tone it down a notch lmao
Don’t mean to nitpick but isn’t that called an opinion piece rather than an article? Either way I think it fairly captures a prudent approach to financing.
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Agreed. The land value map mentioned in the last 2-to-3 State of Downtown reports show how much energy North Hills is pulling from Downtown. An MLB stadium in this area, would be even more of a problem for downtown businesses and services.
Downtown shouldn’t be an afterthought when it comes to new dense “life-style large scale developments” if we want true sustainability (environmental and city service sustainability). Dense sprawl is still sprawl.
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I’d argue that a guy in Asheville who works for a corporate PR company writing an ‘opinion piece’ for McClatchy isn’t really ‘The N&O ‘Raleigh’s newspaper of record’ following the issue.”
This isn’t Wiseman, DeCock, or even Andrew Carter following a story. Those guys write for ‘our local newspaper of record’. This is Sager Sane, a self proclaimed ‘corporate communications consultant’ who has never written anything in the N&O as far as I can tell.
Interesting.
What’s even more interesting is that the N&O has NEVER written an article about Raleigh’s MLB push. Forget the community angle, they’ve ignored Tom’s statements, the hiring of Brian Fork presser where a good chunk was about his role in bringing MLB here, or even statements from Governor Stein about bringing MLB to Raleigh.
In fact, Forbes has written more articles on Raleigh’s MLB push than our local newspaper, The N&O.
Go search on their page. You get this article and a link to one random OG podcast that discusses it (which they are not associated with).
Look, talking about funding is good. Having conversations to make sure everything is transparent and in the publics interest is necessary. But if you were doing this in good faith you’d explain that MLB doesn’t come here without some sort of public funding, and public funding isn’t one size fits all.
Very few would sign on if the plan was to ‘raise property taxes to pay for a stadium’ , but most would if funding came from sources created specifically for sports/economic development / or using TIF districts ( like Chicago) or jock taxes (like Portland).
If you want to have the conversation in good faith, you need to educate people on how it all works and what the options are. Instead of broad brushing with language like “If history is our guide, we, the taxpayers, would almost certainly be stuck footing most of the bill.”
To me, this is either lazy journalism or paid PR.
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I’m like Alabama Coach Bear Bryant’s statement while recruiting Birmingham’s Tony Nathan sitting in Tony’s living room with all of Tony’s family, Tony’s dad asked how many black players Coach do you have at Alabama. Coach Bryant answered, I don’t have white football players & I don’t have black football players, I have football players & I Think The Time Is Right for bringing Tony to Alabama ! Well, I Think The Time Is Right For Bringing MLB To Raleigh! If you want to see one heck of a high school football true story movie, watch “Woodlawn” on Tubi TV. Tony’s senior year at Woodlawn in a home game Birmingham stadium, 42,000 fans attended & 20,000 fans were turned away. Tony brought a National Championship to Alabama in the win over Penn State & then played at Miami 10 seasons. Yes! It’s time that Us tax payers, City of Raleigh , Wake County Leaders, State of NC All come together to give MLB one heck of a package offer to bring MLB to our State & City!
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Ehh the neighborhoods in downtown Raleigh would disagree. It’s a safer bet to put it in the Lenovo center site. I don’t wanna hear whining and complaining from a certain demographic.
Tubi is free. Also two great true story college football movies are “Greater” - a walk-on 1999 season , University of Arkansas & “5th Quarter”- Wake Forest University 2006 season . Pre-Season WF was picked for last place in The ACC & had a 11 & 2 record finish.
If it can be pulled off, the benefits to the city of having the stadium at the Arena District are pretty clear.
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