That’s fair. Maybe I missed it in the run up to the announcement, but I didn’t know the budget was $15m. Was that made public at some point?
If I’d known that, I’d have tempered my expectations a bit. All we’d heard as fans was that stadium improvements were coming soon that would put us on par with other top programs. So, maybe that’s on me for having my expectations out of whack. (Plus, I’m at work so haven’t had a chance to read everything and watch all videos, was going strictly off the photos).
Mike , Am I understanding you right that these plans are showing at least a 5,000 fan seat stadium? This would be super compared to 3,000 standing room only. More often than desired, I have seen fans turned away on a Friday Night game with Clemson , UNC, ECU.
Someone mentioned $15MM in this thread… I haven’t actually looked for it in the release so maybe that’s not accurate?
I will say the athletics department really wanted to do more, but they are still playing catch up from all of the losses they incurred during COVID. Funding is 100% an issue here. They were really hit hard as all of their budgets are solely based on their profits and they effectively lost an entire year of revenue. Hopefully this project will be set up so that future expansion is made easier for when additional funds come available and they can build off of what they already have.
Hopefully the improvements will be as nice as the improvements they did towards Reynolds. Granted if my memory serves me correct they had allocated around $35 million for those improvements vs the $15 million towards the Doak.
Speaking of Reynolds…I wonder if that UNC women’s basketball coach will keep calling it a ‘small gym’ after that beatdown NC State ladies dished out.
I personally love what they did with Reynolds. It’s a huge improvement to the experience and adds an additional level of pride into the equation on campus.
Watching part of the national championship football game (that I don’t care about in the least)….
Guess which other city has ALL of it’s sports stadiums……Downtown!!!
Indianapolis doesn’t have an MLB team……but guess where there MiLB stadium is located?..…just a few blocks from Lucas Oil Stadium. In fact they have 3 separate athletic sports venues….not some dual-purpose/hybrid “entertainment & sports arena”
And Raleigh continues more studies & trying to rationalize how PNC Arena’s location is such a “great location”……
While I think stadiums should be downtown, I don’t think they should all be next to each other as that creates a dead zone when there aren’t any events. I also don’t think NFL stadiums should always be downtown as they only have 8-9 home games a year. MLB has 80 and NHL/NBA have 40 home games plus they can share an arena with concerts and other events.
I don’t care if they are next door to each other or scattered about downtown.
My point is Raleigh can’t even figure out how the hell to put a single stadium or arena anywhere downtown.
They have to water it down with this “entertainment venue” bullsh## when they even float the idea…which is nothing but talk….& more talk….& studies……& surveys…….& “community forums” so people can bitch about gentrification on a plot of land where there are no houses….
Indy is an interesting case study as a non-traditional tourist town that has highly prioritized and invested in attracting major events. It’s why they have a Conrad and JW Marriott and all those huge venues.
Is it good for the city at large? Honestly no idea.
If you like downtown sports stadiums so much, have you thought about moving to Charlotte, North Carolina? I hear Charlotte’s got a lot … of stadiums! I hear there’s a downtown NBA arena, NFL stadium and MiLB stadium. Clearly, then, Charlotte must be a great city with great leadership that is really on the rise and a force to be reckoned with.
Anyway, glad to hear you’re enjoying the game so much and having such a fun time!
That’s a great question! One possible reason why this may be the case is that in 1980 Indianapolis had a population of over 700,000, while Raleigh had a population of just over 150,000. At the time, Raleigh was actually smaller than Greensboro!
It’s just possible that this vast discrepancy in population may be part of the reason why Indianapolis ended up with a dome while Raleigh did not.
Not to put words in his mouth, but I think he’s saying there’s other paths to becoming a city people want to live in than prioritizing investment in downtown sports stadiums, and that expecting Raleigh to have had a RCA Dome style 80s dome (which would probably already be demolished given the fate of most indoor stadiums of that era) is kind of silly given that it was barely more than a big town at the time.
I’m saying this as someone that 100% wants the Canes/NC State basketball to have a modern downtown arena.
Yes. When people say, “Why didn’t Raleigh do this sort of stuff back in the 80s and 90s???” it makes me wonder if people realize just how absolutely extraordinary Raleigh’s growth has been over the last century.
In 1920, Raleigh was about the same size as Fargo, North Dakota. As late as 1950, Durham was bigger than Raleigh. In 1980, Greensboro has was still bigger than Raleigh. Raleigh has grown at a pace that has been nothing short of extraordinary. There are few, if any cities, in the country that have seen that kind of growth. This city is like a talent magnet, a rocket-powered dynamo that shows no signs of slowing. So, clearly, we must have been doing a whole hell of a lot of things right! We’ve made some fantastic choices as a city. And while we don’t know what Indianapolis would look like today if it hadn’t built the now-demolished Hoosier Dome in the 1980s, the city certainly hasn’t seen any sort of boom since then.
I totally disagree that we’re too late for anything. To quote the great Buck O’Neill, I was right on time. If you live in one of America’s great centuries-old cities, so many of the city’s crucial choices have already been made, and are sort of locked in now. But here in Raleigh, we’re making the decisions that are going to shape the future of this city right now. It’s happening on our watch. This is an incredibly exciting time for the city of Raleigh, and to be living in the city of Raleigh.
I’ll say it again: I love Raleigh, and I love living here. Pro sports are great and all, but sports or no sports, Raleigh is flippin’ awesome. (And I’ve been to Albany, and Albany doesn’t even belong in the same sentence as Raleigh unless you’re singing the song about the 50 state capitals. You’ve got to be absolutely kidding me bringing Albany into this discussion.)
Indianapolis, Austin, & charlotte usa annexed most of their entire counties during the 80’s & 90’s so their populations are skewed. Raleigh…for whatever reason did not do so. None of these metros are significantly larger than Raleigh. Raleigh’s CSA is larger than Austin and almost as large at Indy (certainly growing faster). So no, it is not a population thing.
) put in place!
