Raleigh Stadium/Arena/Sports Discussions

If growth this decade stayed consistent for the next 9 years, the Raleigh MSA would have 1.718M people and the Triangle CSA would be 2.489M. if counties are added to either, those numbers would escalate.
Wake County would top 1.3M and Raleigh would likely be nearing 550,000. If Raleigh sees a surge in urban infill across its limits, or if it annexed within its ETJ, the municipal number would be higher.

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Cargill site now a possibility for the soccer stadium.

NCFC owner Steve Malik would not confirm the Cargill site is the principal target but said, ā€œWeā€™ve looked at multiple locations and that is a location that has some decent acreage,ā€ he says. ā€œThere arenā€™t many of those. That location has come up multiple times.ā€

https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2019/03/08/north-carolina-football-club-eyes-alternate-site.html?iana=hpmvp_trig_news_headline

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David Meeker suggests a Goodmon/Goodnight ownership group for MLB Raleigh!!! Would be big!!!

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How aboutā€¦ ā€œGoodman, Goodnight, & The Meekerā€™sā€? :grin:

Interesting combo there. SAS (with Goodnight as founder) has a huge core competency in statistical data analysis and baseball is the most statistically influenced sport. Could be a cool synergy.

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If the other properties below the former Cargill site were to be purchased, is it possible to build both a soccer stadium and a baseball stadium? What do you need for a baseball stadium at a minimum? 10 acres?

Looking at Fenway Park, itā€™s totally possible to design a stadium that will fit in where the current Raleigh Truck Leasing and Cardinal International Trucks warehouses are. Looks like their owners might score a nice pay day if that was the case.

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Interesting thought for sure! Goodmon Field at SAS Park!!!

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It is totally reasonable.

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Every time I play with Mapfrappe, I just want to vomit when I see how the suburban nature of the Walnut Terrace development totally wasted downtown land. Talk about a close-in site where a significant project could have be built!

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Yeah but we canā€™t cry over what has already been done. The Cargrill industrial area is a goldmine.

  1. Full on industrial warehouses with no current residential properties affected.

  2. No historic property

  3. Rail line goes through the far right of the property, meaning you can build a rail station without compromises.

  4. Close to downtown Raleigh and 440.

  5. Enough space for a baseball stadium and a hockey or soccer stadium plus enough space for other projects just a mix-use development or even a public plaza.

  6. Enough space for a massive parking deck.

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I think a lot of that design was due to the history of the lot. They basically just upgraded what was there it seems.

https://legeros.com/history/stories/walnut-terrace/images/

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And then allow businesses and stuff to fill in the gaps between downtown proper and the Cargil site and you essentially extend downtown.

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Bingo. Now we just need the will and several wealthy investors. Plus see if these property owners are willing to sell the land for a nice profit. Since itā€™s industrial but generic Iā€™m sure that wonā€™t be too hard of a sale if thereā€™s enough backing from the community.

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Just need to win that Powerball and Iā€™m inā€¦ probably need to buy a powerball ticket one of these daysā€¦

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Itā€™s not like we donā€™t have the wealthiest billionaire living next door in Cary. The Goodnights could do so much more for Raleigh if they wanted to, but Jim seems to just care about Cary. I know that his son dabbles in DT Raleigh stuff, and thatā€™s appreciated, but there definitely could be a lot more impact from that familyā€™s wealth.

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Curious about that competing proposal for a city/county stadium. Seems a stadium built only for two small universities would not really be a game changer. They really ought to talk to Malik about joining forcesā€¦one of the big sticking points with the MLS Stadium was finding enough uses for it on non-FC/Courage game days and that could be the ticket.

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Yeah, minimum ten acres, and thatā€™s being fairly optimistic. Fenway was built to specifications that you couldnā€™t get away with today. For reference, the only three MLB stadiums to be built or under construction since 2010 are in Miami, suburban Atlanta, and suburban Dallas-Ft. Worth. The Miami stadium is on a 17-acre site that was freed up by knocking down the old football stadium. The ā€œAtlantaā€ stadium occupies 15 acres of a 60-acre tract being developed by the team. Thatā€™s definitely the new trend, by the wayā€“teams want to control a lot of land around the stadium so they can develop it. The stadium being built in Texas will take up 13 acres of a 40-acre tract.

The stadium with the smallest footprint in MLB is Target Field in Minnesota, but it takes up 10.5 acres in airspace, which is typically a constraint you also have to account for, and it had all kinds of fortuitous circumstances going for it that probably wouldnā€™t be replicated anywhere else.

So, yeah, 10 acres is a maybe plausible, but definitely best-case, scenario, and thatā€™s before you account for a single parking space, or anything other than the stadium itself. Itā€™s worth nothing that the actual Cargill land is bounded by Wilmington St., City Farm Rd. and Blount St. and is 10.05 acres. (The overlay on the image is on land that isnā€™t part of the Cargill property.)

Thereā€™s another narrow strip of land totaling an acre and a half owned by other entities that Iā€™m sure will get bought out in any scenario. And then the city of Raleigh owns almost six acres, which is the rest of the land stretching south to City Farm. So in theory thatā€™s enough land for an MLB stadium, but Iā€™m not sure the dimensions are rightā€“the land is kind of narrow for an MLB stadium. If you also bought out the owners of the land between Blount St. and the railroad, and closed down that portion of Blount and City Farm, I think you could just barely fit an MLB stadium there. (Iā€™m not saying that would actually be a good idea, though.) But no way you could fit two stadiums there.

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Iā€™ve always thought that the Penmarc Drive area had the most potential with its access to DT and I40. Just among 3 parcels, owned by the same couple, thereā€™s over 31 undeveloped acres there.

I just found the co-owner of that land with the above obituary from last year. I suppose that his widow owns that land now.

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An MLB stadium at Penmarc, and an MLS stadium at Cargill, connected by a vast mixed-use district between the two. Now all we need is 2 billion dollarsā€¦

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I can PayPal $20 to help.

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