Raleigh Stadium/Arena/Sports Discussions

The Pub
1073

Malik/Kane have nearly 60 acres of woefully undeveloped land Inside the Beltline. He’s developing it. He also is a Raleighite and he sees the value of a stadium downtown for the City. Raleigh is the only North Carolina city of any size without a downtown sports arena/stadium. Even Kinston has a downtown ballpark. Fayetteville just built a brand new baseball stadium…downtown.

He’s moving forward with the project but he knows the stadium can be the centerpiece for the project and good for the City as a whole.

Raleigh needs to step up or we will lose the opportunity to charlotte usa. Raleigh’s bid is soccer specific which is what MLS has stated they wanted for a long time, even though they made a couple exceptions (ATL). Tepper just wants to get MLS to hep pay for his football team.

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1074

The Panthers are building some ‘Field of Dreams’ practice and admin site with a hotel/conference center piece. They’re banking on some kind of Panther-centric tourism to the site (which I can’t fathom, but it’s their money).

https://www.heraldonline.com/sports/nfl/carolina-panthers/article235020207.html

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1075

Right now they’re sitting on a lot of land inside 277 that’s worth quite a bit of money and they’re using it for football practice. They will redevelop their current practice sites in Uptown Charlotte and make a killing.

They also chose Rock Hill partially because they want to show some love to both Carolinas. (I’m sure there were financial considerations too).

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1076

@UncleJesse I get that, but why are we under the assumption that Kane is going to develop this land regardless RIGHT NOW?

He’s got SH phases 2 and 3. He’s got all that land over by Boylan Heights, he’s got the Fayetteville St building over top of the parking deck (right?) , and he has North Hills (am I missing anything?). He’s not getting around to Downtown South for a while unless he has a real reason to put those projects on hold and shift priority. I doubt a minor league soccer stadium is going to generate the type of traffic/attendance that would warrant him doing that. I do believe that if we were an MLS frontrunner that would change his thinking.

So my question is, why the haste here? Why not get a vote on contingency. Should we land MLS, then we fund the stadium. If we don’t then we wait and use that land as leverage for what we REALLY want, which is a top-level professional franchise (which would definitely warrant the $1.9 billion investment in development around it.)

My fear is that some may be getting greedy bc the getting is good right now (market-wise). We don’t want to end up like Charlotte who jumped the gun, built and AAA ballpark and now have boxed themselves in, and basically taken themselves out of the running for MLB (which is set to expand in the near future).

We are in the same situation here.

Why not just wait it out and go after what we really want? If Kane really does own that land outright, then what is the rush?

Meanwhile, for MLB, I’ve been told by 3 separate people that cover baseball expansion nationally that they believe if Raleigh had a plan with land, a developer and city/county interest that we’d be one of the top 3 markets to land one of MLB expansion/relocation franchises. If we miss on MLS, why is this not our next push?

For the sake of transparency, my personal hope is that I would love to see the city/county grant a good chunk of money on contingency for a stadium for a pro sports team, whether is be MLS or MLB. This way, we have leverage over almost every other market should MLS expand again, or MLB expansion begin.

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1077

Kinda a chicken-egg scenario. MLS won’t give Raleigh a team without a concrete stadium plan. NYC & Miami got away with it because of their huge market sizes and owners. Charlotte could potentially get around this since they have a backup and/or temporary solution with BofA. Raleigh HAS to have the stadium funding first for MLS to say yes.

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1078

He is not the developer for 121 Fayetteville St, just the property manager.

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1079

So that’s what I’m on board with. A concrete stadium plan and the funding ready to go. That’s pretty much what every other franchise has had. None of them just built a stadium and said “Ok, now give us a team.” What I’m taking away from all of this is that Malik wants to build a stadium whether we get MLS or not.

Personally I’m not a fan of that move for a ton of reasons, but that’s just my opinion.

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1080

At 65, Kane has indicated that he’s not going to be able to do this forever. Maybe, it’s a legacy thing.

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1081

Well I think SC did kick in an incentive package

1082

I guess I’m more worried about the county/city being hoodwinked into funding a stadium under the assumption that it will get us MLS. If Charlotte gets that 30th franchise (and like it or not, that’s the way it’s looking) then are we just pouring this much money into a minor league soccer stadium? This aspect of the project isn’t being discussed publicly from the Kane/Malik side, but I think the public should be aware of it. We’ve all seen the plan for if we get MLS and most of us approve of it. However, what is the plan if we don’t?

The messaging we initially were given is that we are building a new district for an MLS stadium. Then, it shifted without much fanfare (when Tepper’s plans began to emerge), to them wanting funding for a ‘multi-purpose’ stadium, which just so happens to be shaped like a soccer field and potentially housing NCFC/Courage.

So Is this really just an ask for the county/city to fund a stadium for NCFC/Courage? Does that change anything in most people’s minds?

This is where I get a little skeptical about Malik’s ask. If I am following, it seems like Malik doesn’t really have anything to lose.

What does Malik have to gain w/ the funding of the DT South project?

  • At best, the potential of landing MLS in the next round of expansion (if there is one)
  • At worst, a county-funded new stadium for NCFC which would likely increase attendance and thus revenue

What does Malik have to lose w/ the funding of the DT South project?

  • Nothing?

It SEEMS as if Kane is the one holding the risk here, and it isn’t that much risk at this point. He just pieced together a huge swath of land in an area that is all but certain to be some of the most desirable property in the next 10-20 years (esp. once Dix comes online). Whether he gets the stadium or not, he’s not going to lose (if the growth projections of Raleigh hold steady.) If he DOES get the stadium, then great, he builds around that. Win/win.

So who really holds the risk?

If the city/county goes through with funding regardless of a pro franchise being awarded, then they do (bc Kane/Malik’s proposal is that the city/county OWN said stadium.) Now they have a stadium they have to book, fill and make profitable. Malik just moves his NCFC team to a more desirable location and profits and Kane decides what to build and when to build it depending on who the tenant is and how the market is behaving.

Meanwhile, the only group stuck with no out is the city/county who have purchased a sport-specific stadium that they now must manage and make work with guaranteed tenants that brings in only 150k fans per season combined.

Is this an unwarranted fear? I’m open to being persuaded otherwise.

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1083

Does Kane actually own the land, or just under contract with conditions prior to actual acquisition of the property? Same question goes for the Cabarrus project actually.

1084

For the longest time it was just under contract with conditions, so that could still very well be the case. However, if I was a betting man, I would wager a lot that after putting all these parcels together and having the right of refusal on land 2 miles south of downtown (with Dix on the way and Maywood building up fast) he wouldn’t let this go back on the market.

*Especially with all the publicity around the property. If he passed on it, you’d have to believe it’d be gobbled up fast. By who is really the question.

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1085

Wake County Real Estate Data says it still belongs to the Penny family. Malik said they have the land “under contract” and I’ve never seen any news to the contrary.

Because of the legal requirements surrounding opportunity zones, when/if the land is sold to Kane and Malik’s group, the official buyer would be a Qualified Opportunity Zone Fund in which Malik and Kane would be investors, but the QOZF would have other investors too, and the public would never know exactly how much of the money was coming from Kane and Malik specifically.

I agree with @Loup20. Malik can bluff all he wants about how he’s going to shoot the hostage if the city/county doesn’t come up with the ransom money, but it’s fantastically unlikely that he and his co-investors would actually walk away from the purchase option if they didn’t get the public funding for the stadium. Between the OZ and Dix Park and the planned BRT line, it’s just too good of an opportunity to pass up.

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1086

@daviddonovan Was there ever a breakdown on what type of partnership Kane & Malik have? I was under the assumption that Malik was involved in the soccer/stadium aspect of the project and Kane was the one buying up the rest of the property and proposing to build $1.9 billion in development.

Now, I could see where Kane would get a portion of a potential MLS franchise, should the plan come to fruition, but obviously those details would never be discussed publically (at least at this point).

**Off-topic, but another big winner if this district gets built is Greg Hatem, who owns the beautiful Bane Water Treatment facility right next door (which has been marketed online as a potential retail/office space in need of an upfit)

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1087

This development would be huge for Hatem. It wouldn’t make sense for him to refurbish Bain now, but between this and the BRT line, it would suddenly make a ton of sense to do so, and that would be a really nice addition to that part of town. That’s such a lovely building.

No, no information about the nature of the partnership has been disclosed publicly, nor would there be any reason why it would ever be made public (unless the county commission or city council demanded it as a condition of public funding, which seems highly unlikely).

But, even accounting for borrowing, neither Malik nor Kane nor Billie Redmond, who is also part of this group, could come up with $1.9 billion on their own, so they would raise the rest by pitching this to investors, and those deals would be worked out privately, and the money would go through the QOZF, and then into the project.

It’s not 100 percent clear (to the public, at least), what the arrangement would be in terms of ownership of an MLS franchise, but it certainly sounds like Malik is interested in being the sole owner. If a franchise ever did come to fruition, then you could expect to learn a little more about what the ownership group looks like.

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1088

Here’s a hint to help you attain 20 characters. Just drop an emoji at the end of your short post. The emojis themselves are “worth” several characters.

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1089

Doesn’t always work for me. User error is a b!tch. :joy:

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1090

Louisville’s new soccer stadium under construction. 10,000 with ability to be expanded to 20,000. On edge of downtown. Louisville has a massive downtown footprint, some cool areas but so spread out.

image
image2851×2138 2.4 MB

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1091

Tom Dundon still making strides to bring outdoor NHL game to Raleigh. Wish Kane & Malik would pull him in on the MLS stadium bid effort.

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1092

Mr. STEVE Malik better hurry up Charlotte licking up the paste let’s restart the movement again so we can start the juices quickly.

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