We’ve got the toughest piece of the puzzle acquired. Which is a motivated ownership group that has the money to get it done. As MLB Raleigh’s data shows, we’ve got the right market for the team to succeed. I truly think we have a really solid shot at landing a team if the MLB does decide to expand. That said I can still acknowledge it’s far from a guarantee that it will happen.
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I’m afraid of the other competition really. The stadium i’m not worried I think we wont have an issue with funding, I wish I could see the future and know but I think our obstacles will be corporate support.
I do worry how long stadium sure surveys and studies will take.
Camden Yards (Baltimore Orioles) design
scheme 
:
45,971 seat capacity
or Wrigley Field (Chicago Cubs) design scheme :
41,649 seat capacity
If and only if the stadium is located in DS 
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I don’t i’m just always gonna be worried about competition, I mean i’m afraid I’ve seen this play out before. I mean I trust the process, but we’re ahead now but I always have to be skeptical. Social media comments don’t make my anxiety easier. It could be awhile before expansion happens but I have to be realistic about the possibilities. If you don’t understand that’s okay.
I’d tell you the outdoor football fields are a great spot, but the state isn’t letting TD touch that until the 80 acres is developed basically (though maybe they’d let the centennial authority). I mean, maybe if they’re willing to pay NCSU a hefty amount to expand the football facility, they’d be willing to lose those fields.
Nice to see this first part moving quickly!
Hopefully more news soon on the rest of Phase 1 (pink buidings).
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Dang they are doing this fast. Are you sure I’ll take 9 months
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crazy to think that just a couple of decades ago, pre Nashville NFL team, the major city and tourist draw in TN was MEMPHIS. Memphis is a slum now, lost their Delta hub, it’s just a tragic city. My how fortunes turn. Hopefully it’ll be Raleigh’s turn to gain the traction of NC with downtown South, the new Lenovo Center development, Cary soccer, and the MLB pitch.
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?? what do you mean “gain the traction of NC?” Raleigh is growing extremely fast already and has been for decades, there’s loads of development everywhere and imo it’s the front runner for MLB in the southeast. Are you hoping for Charlotte to turn into Memphis or something?
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I mean gain the momentum and attention that Charlotte has seemingly gotten the past 30 years. In no way do I want Charlotte to turn into the armpit of Tennessee: Memphis, and didn’t mean to imply that. Charlotte has plenty of problems as it is; I was just there this weekend and while there are its share of very nice neighborhoods in the city limits, the traffic is horrible and road layout is absolutley atrocious. As the single dominant city in the area vs us here having Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and TBH even Cary now, things are so much more evenly distributed here. There isn’t a giant dead zone of crappy and blighted development for miles in any direction ringnig the Triangle the way there is coming from any direction into the city of Charlotte.
I’d love for the momentum and financial investment that historically has been focused on Charlotte to come our way here in the Triangle.
I do think a large reason for the difference in visible high rise development between Charlotte and Raleigh in particular has been completely different politics and industry between Charlotte and Raleigh. Raleigh has been and will continue to be higher ed, government, research, biotech, and Democrat dominated, while Charlotte has been banking and finance, transportation, tourism and attractions, and Republican led.
Charlotte’s (ego?) nature definitely gets in the way of itself when the elected officials in the state capitol get ticked off at Charlotte and cut off their funding for rail transit etc. I envy some of the improvements to transit and infrastructure Charlotte got done while being far enough away from the capital to be left alone, but SOME of their road systems in particular are not even a bandaid on a bleeding artery. It is an exhausting city there, in my opinion.
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Charlotte had two main things that pushed it well beyond the other NC cities over the past century, and those were an industry that builds tall buildings, and local leaders that dreamed huge. Obviously things are a little different now, but Charlotte was smaller than Raleigh is currently when it landed NFL and NBA teams within a decade of each other. Not much bigger than Raleigh is currently when it built the first section of light rail. Etc. Moves like those put Charlotte on the map from a national perspective decades ago, and they’ve had a chance to mature in the time since. The industries that established themselves in the Raleigh area aren’t ones that typically build tall buildings, and I’ve never gotten the sense that local leaders really wanted Raleigh to become a big city. However, there are a lot of smaller things that were seemingly sacrificed in Charlotte due to pursuing big things like sports teams and whatnot…our greenway network is nowhere close to the level of Raleigh’s (although it is getting better), our culinary scene wasn’t a priority, etc. No city does everything perfectly and some things invariably end up getting compromised in the pursuit of other things.
If Charlotte was the capital of NC and repeatedly hampered efforts in Raleigh to build rail transit, I think you would think differently. Charlotte contributes close to a third of the entire state’s GDP yet has had a literally pathetic amount of support from state leaders in Raleigh for close to a century now (I would argue state leaders are generally more hostile towards Charlotte in a way that they aren’t to other cities). Charlotte has done better than it probably has any right to given how state officials in Raleigh kneecap us at basically every turn.
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Hey don’t blame us for the actions of some people who occasionally spend a couple weeks here for work. They don’t like Raleigh any more than Charlotte (witness the state government dead zone they have no interest in doing much more than making into giant filing cabinets that are easy to commute to and from and empty parks).
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Right; those people are from rural areas not Raleigh.
Let’s not forget the recent governorship debacle of Charlotte’s former mayor.
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Part of the reason may be the fact that Charlotte has taken everything including major business, commerce and sports teams away from other deserving cities. Plus Charlotte is too close to SC and I doubt that prioritizing Charlotte, which includes portions of SC, is favorable for lawmakers that represent other cities or towns.
When one city gets the majority of the pie, every other municipality is left behind.
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“Deserving” is doing a lot of work in there. There are real benefits to putting businesses in hubs of talents and services, it’s the whole point of big cities.
Doesn’t make lawmakers from places like Winston-Salem like Charlotte any more, but it’s a real thing.
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You’re right not even the leaders running for office do either, I think Raleigh failed to realize things like pro-sports, and company HQs among others are economic engines. Even in this forum I’ve gotten some pushback for my ideas here, me and @dtraleigh were talking a few months ago that Raleigh is just a place for locals not for tourists.
If we get MLB here just like we did the NHL I’ll just be a locals thing. If course I wanna change that. It one of the reasons why I wanted start a website so I could bring more notoriety to stuff like this.
I think Mayor Baldwin even though she leaving started to realize pro-sports is an economic engine and that why she excited about baseball coming here possibly she even admitted that in her announcement that she’s stepping down. I also think @anon8787296 kinda gets it too, but its more of Raleigh treated itself like a neighborhood city than a real city MLB is a big test for us I think politicians locally and county wide should treat this like an economic engine but I doubt it. Lou Pascucci @Loup20 says we have government support for MLB in Raleigh but its from a governor who’s leaving office, and the mayor of Raleigh who leaving office, I have yet to see Janet Cowell, or Corey Branch or anyone running for mayor or council or any county commissioner speak about MLB or show there support, but I feel like I’ll fall on deaf ears.
The debacle that occurred in Raleigh?
As the capital, Raleigh hosts the state government; the state government isn’t “of Raleigh”.
Charlotte bet much of its economy on banking a long time ago and was fortunate that its bet paid off. Banking grew rapidly while manufacturing (which had been a major industry in the Charlotte area) started struggling. Of course banks and financial firms will flock there now instead of Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, etc. There’s so much talent and infrastructure for that in Charlotte that can’t be easily replicated or recreated in other cities. Same reason why so many research and biotech firms locate in RTP, aerospace manufacturing builds in Greensboro, etc. None of those cities are being “left behind”…they have all pursued different industries to avoid competing directly with each other, and some are growing faster than others. Banking has historically been much more high profile as well, but there was serious concern for the future of Charlotte when the Great Recession hit.
As far as taking sports teams from “other deserving cities”, Charlotte had big city dreams, Raleigh did not. Raleigh still has not fielded a home-grown sports team, and the first years of the Whalers’ move and rebrand to the Hurricanes were a nearly fatal disaster of logistics and planning. I think Raleigh’s MLB efforts will be much more deliberate though and as long as nobody from the state level seriously fumbles this opportunity, an MLB team seems like it’s Raleigh’s to lose.
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