I’m sure you can do the same before and after pictures with DTR if you want to use a 25 year timeframe and the development boom will appear just as remarkable.
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Actually you can do that excercise with the photos I linked. The area North of the tracks is relatively unchanged in comparison to the South.
North of the tracks you have a typical 25 year development cycle. To the South of the tracks you have an aging industrial area in proximity to a downtown that was energized by a sports complex.
North of the tracks is starting to catch up, but you could also make the argument that the downtown revitalization of Durham started with the DBAP/Tobacco complex and moved North.
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I don’t think stadiums create any development that wouldn’t happen somewhere else. Honestly, this would probably take away some development that would occur downtown but since it’s ITB and in a lower income/underutilized area i’m ok with it.
Also, Kane already bought this land so it sounds like he plans to develop it with or without a stadium.
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Agreed, the Raleigh MLS stadium will likely be in a currently underutilized area so there’s really no downside like preventing alternative uses. It could be the exception to the rule and be a catalyst for local development.
The fact that it could be so close to downtown (i.e. just to the south) is doing better than the peer cities, where the stadiums are going to the boonies.
The Nashville MLS stadium won’t be downtown, but out near the fairgrounds. No renders yet on that one.
Austin FC will play in North Austin. Just couldn’t squeeze out a downtown site. Interesting stadium tho!
The stadium will be ECO friendly (but no solar panels?), and have parking for 500 bikes.
Raleigh be will be doing great to get their stadium near downtown. With some cool greenway connections and a transit line perhaps?
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I think Raleigh could really benefit from a downtown sports venue. It is one of the two or three top items on my personal wish list for DTR. That being said, I still think the proposal bears close examination. Some people are comparing the total impact from the mixed-use development to the incremental impact of some of the other proposals, but that isn’t really apples to apples. If Kane and Malik develop this site, a good chunk of those uses (office, resi, hotel, whatever they put there) will be development that otherwise would have happened elsewhere in Raleigh, most likely downtown. If developers think office tenants will fill a building, they will build an office building: see FNB, One Glenwood, and soon Two Hillsborough, 301 Hillsborough, and the N&O/Nexus site. Also, it is interesting that Malik has really backed off the MLS angle, and I question how active the stadium will be if MLS is not an anchor tenant.
I also think some of my opinion on the proposal will depend on exactly how close this is to downtown, specifically existing restaurants and bars. For me, it is much more appealing if I can walk from a food/beverage establishment downtown to the ballpark. That is what makes DBAP nice. You get there and make a day or evening of it. If this is a mile away, in some senses it isn’t that much better than if it were in North Hills b/c it will be its own little destination instead of part of DTR.
Also, when they say they have the site under control, I doubt that means they have purchased it. Far more likely they have an option to purchase.
Also, I support improving our existing assets, like PNC, but man, where is the bang for the buck with that proposal? A $200M ask seems like a lot for improvements that seem pretty marginal. If they weren’t going to put PNC downtown, at least it should be a mixed-use development there along the lines of the Battery in Atlanta.
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Somewhat related - Trophy Maywood is a 0.7 mile, 15 minute walk to Penmarc. And Trophy owns two adjacent buildings to their brewery with unannounced plans to expand with restaurant space. I heard this from one of the managers a few years ago, but the Trophy Morgan expansion is surely taking precedence at the moment.
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And eventually there will be sidewalks on Maywood, currently most of the street has none.
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Yes, I do worry that Raleigh is going to learn the wrong lessons from being in close proximity to one of the very, very few stadium success stories in America.
The crucial difference that makes DBAP different from pretty much every other project that’s been tried is that it happened to be very conveniently located next to a million square feet worth of floor space in existing historic buildings that had been lying fallow for years. The stadium was built first and the Tobacco Campus was resurrected later, and it was largely the latter that kicked off the resurgence of the area, not the stadium per se. (DPAC also helped.) Sure, it’s probably the case that Jim Goodmon wouldn’t have taken an interest in reviving ATC if not for the stadium, but it’s also not a trick you could really repeat anywhere else.
But Durham as a whole, like Raleigh as a whole, has been booming for the last 25 years. Does anyone seriously want to make the case that the baseball stadium is the reason for all the development we’ve seen across that whole city? Now, what stadiums can sometimes do is attract development that was going to happen anyway, and concentrate it in a particular area (See also Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.) If somebody really wants to make the case that we need to figure out a way to move development from other parts of Raleigh and concentrate it in Penmarc specifically, I’d be willing to hear that out, but that doesn’t seem to be the argument that anyone is making here.
One other crucial difference: The DBAP cost $18.5 million in when it was built in 1995. That’s a little more than $30 million in today’s dollars. Malik is asking for way, way more than that. (And the Bulls bring in more fans per season than even an MLS team does.)
If Malik and Kane were just building a run-of-the-mill mixed use development and they asked for $300 million in straight cash from the taxpayers, the city would tell them to go get bent. The fact that they want to put a soccer stadium in the middle of this one in no way changes the value proposition for the taxpayers, and while it is clearly very important to Steve Malik, I very strongly doubt that it matters at all from Kane’s perspective. Is Kane really going to walk away from a profitable development opportunity because the city/county didn’t put up the money to build the soccer stadium? I seriously doubt that he would, and I would certainly be interested in at least finding out what happens if that bluff gets called, rather than just writing a check for whatever dollar figure they ask for.
At the very minimum, negotiate as hard as possible. In Minneapolis they just built an MLS stadium for $200 million (and it was totally privately financed!), in Houston they built an MLS stadium for under $100 million (a little more than that in today’s dollars) and it was mostly privately financed, and Philadelphia’s stadium was built for not much more than that. So it can be done.
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It’s an interesting discussion. I generally don’t think of renovating warehouses and manufacturing spaces to office as a very cost effective development strategy. Many times it’s more expensive than building a new facility, particularly when extensive remediation is involved. Either way, the ATC wouldn’t be where it is today without the stadium. CBC bought the ATC 6 years after the stadium was built. It’s possible that without the stadium the structures may have degraded and eventually been torn down to make it more attractive for redevelopment. I’m also fairly confident that if the stadium had been located away from downtown Durham, as was originally proposed, things would look alot different in the area. It’s easy to minimize the DBAP’s impact if it supports your argument but I sincerely doubt that Jim Goodman would share that assessment.
The question remains though, do people want a sports venue in proximity to downtown? Is it a land use that has value as another activity that draws people in to the city and helps to activate that area? Is it valuable to bring 5-10K people there 30 times a year for Courage and NCFC games? At 1.1 miles from Memorial Auditorium is it too far away? I would prefer for it to be closer to the core but I think that’s highly unlikely without a massive increase in the profile of the project. For the people who want a sports team close to downtown this is a realistic site for it. The first time I heard of Penmarc mentioned as a possible spot for a stadium was from Mitch Silver probably 10 years ago. I tend to think he was right about this and I’ve been hoping something would happen there for years.
Whether it’s baseball, hockey, soccer or any other sport, if there is a tax that’s designed to support this type of facility I think a request for a portion of those funds is going to be a part of any proposal for a sports venue. “The revenue supports arts, culture, sports and convention facilities in Wake County.” People voted for the tax to help incentivize projects like this. You can write the County Commission and let them know if you don’t think a stadium merits any of the funds or if others are more deserving.
Every site is different and has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Every plan can be good, bad, or average. Very basic advantages with this site include direct access to an Interstate, a planned BRT corridor in direct proximity, very low demo cost, a large contiguous parcel, solid utility infrastructure and a Southern Gateway project that’s already on the books. In many ways this location is superior to the DBAP site. Developer advantages over other stadium projects would be a partnership with a developer who can kick off a wide range of mixed uses. It’s very similar to the DBAP in that the owner of the sports franchise has a partner who controls the immediately adjacent development. In the end I think that planning and design will be more relevant than the existing conditions in determining how successful the project is.
The public financing portion of this proposal appears to be a very minor component of the package and they have said they would develop the facility even without the tax money. I find it hard to fault someone for putting up their own money to build something on land that they will control. That’s the kind of franchise developer that most people generally would prefer. Malik and Kane are responsible for making sure that the stadium turns a profit and they have the risk since there will probably be performance conditions on any hotel tax funding. If they didn’t believe there would be a substantial increase in attendance and the chance for an MLS franchise when the next expansion comes they would just stay at WakeMed.
As far as drawing development away from the core goes, that doesn’t really concern me. I’m stoked about the BRT and the potential for TOD’s popping up all along the line. I look at this site as a potential mixed-use TOD with the typical uses, plus a stadium integrated into the plan. Penmarc would probably be more competitive with other TOD’s along the BRT line than the DT core. I haven’t seen a proposal but I would expect development similar to what you see around 40 Wade or Glenwood with 5-10 story buildings and ground level retail, texas doughnuts and a couple of hotels. There’s alot of development potential but I don’t think it’s going to be a new downtown built around a stadium.
I’m pretty excited at the prospect of this happening and I can’t wait to see what they have in mind. If it’s the Penmarc site that is.
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I envision a North Hills with a Stadium. Which is about what you described. Hopefully better connected to downtown.
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Given that we live in the World of negotiations, is there any chance that Malik/Kane are asking for more money than they actually expect to get? I can’t imagine that this is purely a thumbs up or thumbs down sort of process. Maybe I’m wrong?
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I wonder how the money is dolled out, is it you submit a proposal and you either get it or you don’t ? Or do you submit a proposal it gets accepted and then the negotiations start?
There appears to be a new article in the N&O regarding Malik and the stadium but its behind the paywall. It’s title is trying to catch your attention with Malik saying “stadium is NOT contingent on MLS franchise”…or something to that effect.
Anyone crazy enough to have paid for the N&O and can summarize the article for us cheap bastards?
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Here’s the link:
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article228117654.html
Basically, he seems to be positioning MLS as an added potential benefit to building the stadium, and doesn’t act as if that’s the prime goal for building the new district.
And if public money isn’t allocated for the potential “billion-and-a-half-dollar” project, Malik said he would develop the land in another fashion, along with Raleigh developer John Kane and an undisclosed group of investors.
He also discusses the role that the Opportunity Zone designation played in choosing this site, and how he is generally supportive of other bids for the Interlocal funds, as well as other soccer expansions in NC, such as Charlotte.
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Thanks.
why the hell would he be supportive of charlotte’s bid?
He just really likes soccer, as far as I can tell, and any soccer is better than no soccer.
I just don’t buy that he supports a competitive bid. I get the impression this guy has a plan…at least I hope he does and it is not supporting a competitive bid. Maybe he’s just reminding the powers that be, subtly that if Wake Co & Raleigh screw around too much longer, Raleigh stands to lose our bid, altogether.
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It would be awesome for them to move forward without funds from the County, turn the stadium into a focus point for a North Hills type development (with better connections to downtown) with or without MLS. It would be great to see a development the size of North Hills promote and hype the Courage, it would certainly bleed over to the rest of the city, and perhaps show MLS that we deserve a franchise. Even without it, it would be cool to see the city embrace the Courage, they’re quite the powerhouse.
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I know I’m a broken record on this, but stadiums don’t generate new economic activity, they just shift it around. It’s not very helpful to take a “before and after” picture and say “this does or does not prove that stadiums generate growth.” That really doesn’t tell you anything. I live pretty close to Fenway Park, which has been there for 107 years, and in the last ten the area has totally exploded with development, but the stadium had nothing to do with it. (Really it’s Boston’s booming economy, very high housing prices, and proximity to a local subway line). When real life economists analyze the data they almost universally agree that there’s no growth associated with stadiums.
And it makes sense. Having a sports stadium doesn’t drive up demand for office space or apartments. And yes, it may help the bar located right across the street, but those patrons are basically “stolen” from another bar in another part of the city.
But again, the important thing is whether or not the people of Wake want to spend their money on this. Once the tax is paid, the money becomes the property of Wake residents, so even if the taxpayer is from outside the county, the tax revenues belong to Wake voters. Whether or not Wake voters want the money spent this way is the important question.
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I don’t really think it really matters if we want it or not. We will not be voting for it as there will not be bond or anything of that sort. It will be decided by Raleigh City Council and the Wake County Board of Commissioners. Unless some large ground swell of support or non support goes to these meetings to express their opinions.
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