Yes, yes, they noticed a huge building that was literally right in front of their faces and was lit up with bright lights on a dark night. Touche, Dr. Moriarty, well played. I’ll make sure that the plans for a downtown Raleigh library include a giant flashing neon sign that says “LIBRARY” so that everyone notices it as they walk by it.
David.
I am currently at a bar in downtown Nashville. The Nashville Predators just lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning. The restaurants and bars are full of both Preds and Lightning fans…NONE of whom just walked in from the library.
As an aside, yet another example of the ROI Raleigh continues to miss out on because our legacy right wing city council (Fetzer & Coble) chose to put PNC out in the middle of nowhere.
5 Likes
A lot of them ate dinner or grabbed some appetizers and beers before the game as well.
All of which benefited small businesses of Nashville…not Walmart for a case of Natty’s.
“Uncle Jesse”.
This has been discussed a bunch of times already in this thread, but this is factually wrong about why PNC is where it is. The arena is where it is, next to the NC State football stadium, because the whole reason for the arena was to build a new home for the NC State basketball team. The arena was financed partly with state and NCSU revenues, and the Centennial Authority is a creation of the General Assembly, and that’s why it’s out by the university.
Anyway, stadiums don’t magically create money, they just change what people spend their limited money on. I like bars as much as the next guy, but given the social costs imposed by alcohol, it would actually be quite unwise for local governments to intentionally try to gin up the amount of alcohol people drink in bars. And in particular, a lot of people drive to sporting events and alcohol-related arrests spike right after big games. I do hope all the folks at your bar are being responsible tonight, but “Look at all these people who stopped to get another drink before they drive home!” is as much a bug as it is a feature, and it’s not in any way problematic if a particular public amenity fails to increase local alcohol consumption.
2 Likes
Should I send you photos of the good people walking around downtown Nashville and spending money with small businesses downtown? Regarding their choosing to “drive drunk”; there was this fantastic creation decades ago called a taxi…and now it’s even easier with Uber & Lyft.
Are you seriously trying to debate me while I am witnessing the economic benefits of a downtown sports stadium in “real time”? I’ve been to PNC a lot (season ticket holder for the Canes…are you?)
I can assure you with a 99.9% confidence that Bridgestone arena generates more economic benefit for Nashville than PNC does for Raleigh.
3 Likes
Nashville can’t possibly be that interesting or exciting if you’re spending all your time there talking to people in Raleigh over the internet.
Also, the existence of taxis (and Uber and Lyft) has noticeably failed to end the existence of drunk driving. Sure, the overwhelming majority of sports fans are responsible, but, yeah, some people do in fact drive home from sporting events drunk.
1 Like
“ No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.”
1 Like
More good news for Raleigh’s Bid and a possible Carolina MLS Derby in the future. If everything goes South Charlotte’s way for the 30th team.
6 Likes
I believe everything you are describing seems to happen naturally on Friday and Saturday nights without a sports stadium in DTR. Can you show us something that Nashville has and Raleigh does not due to the single fact that it has a downtown sports arena and we do not?
6 Likes
Amazon? I kid I kid, but seriously.
Well, yesterday was a Tuesday night for one.
1 Like
True, true. DTR certainly isn’t a ghost town on weekdays either.
This was a Tuesday. Monday night had a WWE event so on back to back nights, Downtown Nashville received an economic lift (restaurants, shops, bars, hotels) on two of the typically ‘slowest’ nights of a given week.
Raleigh has no chance at that economic boost because our arena is in a parking lot.
The vast majority of mid-size cities in America have placed their stadiums and arenas in their downtowns…for this reason among many others. Nashville, charlotte usa, Richmond, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Asheville, Hickory…even Fayetteville now is building their minor league stadium downtown.
If it wasn’t beneficial…these cities wouldn’t be building arenas on potentially otherwise valuable downtown land. The stadiums add to those valuations.
5 Likes
Add to this UncleJesse , High Point built their minor league stadium downtown last year & Gastonia started their stadium downtown yesterday , both having Atlantic League teams & both cities are
building these stadiums . City of Fayetteville built their stadium & their Mayor said on WRAL that this was a no brainer .
1 Like
One reason, and I’m open to changing my mind here, that I feel the arena is in the right place at this time is that when the decision was made in the 1990s to put the arena on Wade versus downtown, downtown Raleigh was basically a blank slate. From what I know, the early to mid-90s was pretty quiet down here.
I feel, that had an arena been put in downtown Raleigh, arena-centric events would have been required to pump life into downtown going forward. Sports bars and restaurants would have opened and it may have crowded out the events we’ve seen between 2000-2010. Parking decks would be everywhere and on on non-arena event nights, downtown would be pretty quiet.
On the flip side, without the arena, DTR grew around events of all types, mainly the arts or other cultural events, and that stuck. The events are tapering down now to a degree and food/beverage “life” is kind of taking off on its own at this point in time without those events. That’s natural and organic economic activity.
So I’m happy with the path Raleigh took, not to say it was right or wrong, but also due to the fact that nothing was really built out by the arena to begin with. The 2020’s is when a serious conversation of a downtown arena can take place AS A RESULT of the growth that’s already happened.
4 Likes
I was around Raleigh when the decision was made and it was ‘pitched’ that the location WOULD in fact see all sorts of development around it. Smedes York (old Raleigh mayor and NC State booster) pitched it as “Meadowlands South”. He (and others) sold everyone on all the new development that would be built around the arena…so effectively they were trying to create a ‘downtown’ (instead of just using the one we had already)…This clearly failed miserably…and many saw at the time…BUT
NC State had waaaay too much say in the plan and our uber conservative leaders caved to them.
the mid-late 90’s was when cities around the country began bringing their stadiums back downtown…except Raleigh.
5 Likes
This is definitely good news for Raleigh’s chances for getting an MLS team, but this is also the most predictable news ever. MLS is going to keep adding teams until ownership groups stop showing a willingness to pay ever-increasing expansion fees to get in on the action. As soon as MLS locks down a 31st and 32nd team, Garber’s going to walk right back up to the podium and say that MLS is looking to expand to 34, and then 36.
If Malik and his people can find the money to build an MLS-caliber stadium and pay the expansion fee, then Raleigh is going to get an MLS franchise. There’s absolutely zero chance MLS says no to that offer, regardless of how many teams there are.
8 Likes
Yeah except unlike those other stadiums/arenas moving downtown, Raleigh’s was a college arena that was co-opted at the last minute to provide a home for a professional hockey team.
9 Likes
I actually think that there is a market and demand for mixed-use development near the PNC Arena. Its a pretty good location, central to the region. But the problem is that so much of the land nearby is owned by the state or already developed with suburban-oriented buildings. Wade Park is a good example of dense mixed-use development given a blank slate, yet it’s still a 10-15 minute walk through the woods to the backside of the arena so doesn’t really feel close being an arena-oriented urban experience.
I think if the State released some of their land for development it would be in high-demand and could result in some mixed-uses and more urban feeling near the arena.
A somewhat simple/easy first-step idea: townhomes along wooded strip of land between Trinity Rd and Carter-Finley parking lot. Something like clusters of “Ten on South Person” buildings but adding in rooftop decks (prime tailgating spots!).
9 Likes