If we had a 22,000 seat sport stadium downtown, we wouldn’t need RedHat.
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That’s still 4x bigger than RedHat. You can compare that to Walnut Creek but it’s not going to accommodate the medium size bands that RedHat gets.
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I’m sure there would be a set up to accommodate smaller shows… Dispatch played Red Bull Arena in NJ (25k) and RedHat… just saying that if RedHat isn’t going to go away then the stadium shouldn’t be built, the town isn’t big enough for the both of them.
(I don’t believe there’s any chance it gets built anyway but…)
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Thinking outside the box here but if they did build the stadium it could possibly replace Walnut Creek amphitheatre . The city of Raleigh owns Walnut Creek and it could be closed and converted to a park or maybe mixed use development (if they wanted to sale the land). So all Walnut Creek events would now be help at the new stadium. That instantly makes it more viable to Raleigh. Red Hat would still be there for smaller venue events and ultimately be replaced by a new amphitheatre at Dix Park (in the distant future).
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RIP Red Hat in about 5 years.
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I’d rather put it on the prison 
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City of Raleigh Sports Prison Complex? Sprinkle some affordable housing on that salad.
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MLS welcomes The Raleigh Jailbirds
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Thinking about the view of the skyline from the SW corner of the stands and I’ve already put down my imaginary season ticket deposit.
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Have Lenoir run under the stadium. They’d have to open up the east side above the seating for shimmer wall adoration. I don’t see why this can’t be a thing.
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Have a better wall. Made of grills for the pre-game cooking. A sizzling wall.
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A stadium could house lighting sources that could really play with the shimmer wall in better ways than today.
It’s buried deep in the story when it ought to be the lede, but the team is asking for $330 million in public money to build a soccer stadium, which is an insane amount of money, and much, much more than most other cities have spent to build MLS stadiums. Yuck.
Also, there are a lot of MLS stadiums across the country, and we can look at the experience of other cites to see how those stadiums are used. It turns out that they hardly get used for anything other than soccer matches. A really good test case for this is Houston’s MLS stadium because the conditions there are basically as favorable as one could ask for: the stadium is downtown, and Houston is a very big city with weather that can accommodate outdoor events year-round.
Despite all those advantages, the stadium is almost never used for anything other than soccer matches or its college football tenant (which Raleigh wouldn’t have). The stadium opened in 2012 and didn’t hold its first concert until 2014. There are currently no concerts scheduled for 2019, and as best as I can tell, the last concert held there was in 2015. The reason for this is probably that a 20,000 stadium with a soccer pitch in the middle is actually a terrible, terrible venue for a concert. Houston’s stadium holds the very occasional rugby match, but that’s basically it.
And if you look at MLS stadiums in other cities, from Philadelphia to Denver to Salt Lake City to Columbus to Kansas City, you find basically the same story: non-soccer-related events at any of those stadiums are exceedingly rare. If this stadium got built, you would be seeing North Carolina FC matches there and very, very little else.
Also, @mike, yes, if you ignore the fact that you’ve now completely cut off Lenoir St., then, yes, it fits. @John, running the street under the stadium would be prohibitively expensive. I’m sure that’s not included in NCFC’s $330 million budget.
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@daviddonovan That’s what I was finding when I was looking around. Almost no MLS stadiums were holding concerts. Probably bc you’d need a retractable roof on it for legit large acts to book it over dedicated concert venues.
But we’ve already let ourselves get off-track if we’re trying to basically justify spending $330 million for a concert venue that will cannibalize other concert venues.
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IMO I think a stadium even if it was only used for the 17 home games is better than the ugly parking deck and government office buildings that are currently there. They don’t seem to be very active at all.
Does the 17 games include both the men’s team and the women’s team? He says it would be used for both teams as well as college and high school tournaments. I personally love the idea of a downtown soccer stadium and think it would be a great addition to downtown. During the times it’s used it would increase hotel room stays and restaurant and bar usage and therefore it would generate more hotel and meal tax revenue to pay for it. The more uses the city can come up with the more taxes we would collect. It could also be used for some of the downtown festivals and maybe July 4 or New Years fireworks, etc.
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The question here isn’t whether a soccer stadium would be nicer than a parking deck. The question here is whether a soccer stadium would be so much nicer than a parking deck that it would be worth spending $330 million in taxpayer money to build one.
If North Carolina FC wants to build a soccer stadium on that spot with 100 percent private funding and absolutely no government contribution whatsoever, I will personally grab my shovel, go to Halifax Mall, and help them break ground on the thing. But that’s most definitely not the deal they’re proposing here.
@rgmedd It does not count the women’s games, but we already have a top-tier women’s team that already has a first-rate stadium. Moving the women’s team’s games from WakeMed Soccer Park to a downtown stadium that seats 20,000 would just be for show to justify the stadium and actually a really bad idea since the team only draws about 5,000 a game. That wouldn’t generate any new benefits that don’t already exist with WakeMed, whereas the impetus for the stadium is that it would let the men’s team bump up to the next tier.
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I don’t think they’re asking for property or income tax money. I believe it’s hotel and meal tax money. Therefore if it brings heads in beds and hungry people then it should generate tax money in addition to whatever money it pulls in from the events themselves. It’s exactly what that tax was intended for.
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@ daviddonovan & Loup20 , I think that this is a long shot , but here goes ! Rochester , NY did this before they built a separate stadium for baseball & soccer . Rochester had their AAA baseball & their
minor league soccer games in their baseball stadium . Build a stadium that would work for both sports .
Minor League Baseball , The Atlantic League , app. 70+ games a season , NCSU/UNC, ECU , Duke Baseball games , Shaw Football , MLS , & possibility some type of High School Tournaments . Depending on if baseball & our soccer makes post season , this should be at least 100+ games a year . Mr. Goodmon & our Mayor are very close , so this helps strongly concerning the hotel tax help .
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