The main issue with the Peace St site is that it’s mostly owned by the state and they’re not going to sell quickly, or at all perhaps. The Cargill site would probably be easier to acquire. I’m all for having an urban stadium, but I don’t see why putting it in our “traditional” downtown is so important. Very few big cities have their arena directly in the central business district (Madison Square Garden is one of the few exceptions). Plus, we tend to think of the area south of Western/MLK as being out of downtown, but it will be very urban in 10-15 years.
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Recently, Garber (MLS commish) has actually said they are planning to expand beyond 28 teams. Pretty good news for Raleigh who was likely in the 29th/30th spot all along anyway.
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Fingers crossed…
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They should and allow for movement between the first and second leagues.
Nobody in American sports is going to spend $300 Million to buy a sports team and be told they they have to be relegated to ‘AA’ ball. America isn’t wired that way. I get that’s how its done in Europe, Latin America, etc but that isn’t how its done here…and we know the American way is the best way!!!
UncleJesse , I can certainly understand what you are saying ! It’s easy to say this because I am not the one spending my money . If The Hurricanes & NCFC together built a stadium at The Cargill Site , hopefully the soccer attendance would increase & in the future when MLS again wanted to add a team , Raleigh would be in the best position to win a team ! What You Think ? But , to be completely honest , I still want The Atlantic League Baseball at Cargill .
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I would absolutely love a joint MLS-NHL stadium downtown. And unless the Red Sox are gonna relocate, I don’t really care that much about baseball coming here. I can watch the Durham Bulls easily enough if I want to watch crappy baseball 
Just to be clear, when Dundon talks about a joint NHL/MLS project, he’s talking about an arena next to a soccer-specific stadium, which would share parking and traffic infrastructure. This would be two stadiums, not one.
The plan to build these stadiums would be entirely dependent on some unspecified level of government agreeing to pay tens of millions of tax dollars and/or free land (and certainly hundreds of millions if there’s an arena component) to private companies owned by billionaires, who would then get to keep all of the profits.
If Dundon and/or Malik want to build a soccer-specific stadium or an arena or whatever with their own money, awesome, more power to them. But if they expect taxpayers to pay to build these palaces for them (and they most assuredly do, I promise you that), then thanks but no thanks. There are far more important uses to which that money could be put.
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Agreed about the use of tax dollars on stadiums, however, I believe Malik’s previous proposal did not indicate tax dollars (albeit, it did require land to be vacated). I’m not interested in funding a stadium project, however, I can see facilitating it via land use variances and fair market value land transactions.
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Yeah, Malik’s original proposal was for the state to gift him some state-owned land. The parcel that Malik wants is actually substantially larger than would be needed for a soccer stadium, and the plan is/was that he would develop the rest. The state was promised a share of the bounty, but the essence of the deal was definitely that Malik would get to develop the land on sweetheart terms–and in the long run, giving someone state-owned land for less than it would fetch on the open market is basically indistinguishable from giving them taxpayer money.
Like you say, I am definitely all for fair market land transactions and providing whatever zoning variances would be needed for such a project. But I strongly suspect that the team owners would have no interest in pursuing such projects of there wasn’t a big pot of subsidies in it for them.
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I thought it was a land-lease proposal? I’m not sure but the State training center was actively being marketed for a land-lease when McCrory was in office.
To get a two venue complex like we already have with PNC & Carter-Finley, don’t expect them to be actually downtown. The best they could do is to be somewhat downtown adjacent. The land requirement for two side by side is just too great. Also, the parking would just add to the land area required, even if it was all in parking decks.
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How about all that land on South Saunders street/Western blvd to I-40? You could build a sportsplex with a Transit hub/station?
That’s an example of downtown adjacent, and the likelihood that two venues are built together gets more likely the further south of Western/MLK one goes. This quickly takes one out of the realm of even feeling like one’s downtown. If you drive north on Saunders from I-40, you really don’t relate to downtown until you crest the hill at the money shot photo location. Clearly, the closer one is to Western/MLK, the better. The best location would be immediately south of that road. IMO, the very best possible location would cost the city Washington Elementary and/or the entire Walnut Terrace complex. This seems to me to be the most sensible location, but it would be an enormous political battle to make that happen.
I just don’t understand how a downtown stadium/arena is workable at all. Downtown struggles to accommodate larger events; hell, Western Blvd can barely even handle rush hour. From a business standpoint I don’t understand why an owner would want to move downtown as it is going to dissuade fans from Durham/Chapel Hill attending games. Smarter thing IMO would be to turn the current PNC/Carter Finley area into an entertainment district and bulk up the transit options in and out of that area.
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Forgive me if this is obvious, but there are over a million residents in Wake county. There are a total of like 450k between Durham and orange counties…why are we so concerned with them? This should definitely be in Wake in the center of it.
I just don’t get this preoccupation with always worrying about Durham and Chapel Hill. They seem to do fine not concerning themselves with Wake.
One million residents is not enough to support a major league team. That’s why there has to be a concern for putting the team in the area most advantageous to drawing fans 50 nights a year. Also if it’s a pain getting in and out of the area around the venue it’s going to discourage people even in Wake County from attending as well.
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@John
I agree about DTR adjacent as I don’t think that DTR proper is large enough in general. Maybe developers/development slowly expanding and building out will be the change that makes this a possibility in the distant future? Maybe years later it will actually be in a larger DTR proper…?
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I can think of 100 other things that I’d rather see on the massive piece of land that two stadiums would use. Seems like it would be a huge dead zone
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…it already is…
And your idea for what to put there is?