Like I said before…It would work.
This summer I wrote about the Bills having a downtown stadium and in what circumstances it should follow. A lot of people don’t believe in it but I insist.
The best and I would say only good (aka potentially profitable) location would be in the Cobblestone Parking District.
It would have to have a convention center attatched.
It would have to have a dome.
With an ample sized convention center attatched in the DOMED stadium project, Buffalo now becomes qualified to host a Super Bowl assuming that there is enough hotel space (new development trends suggest that is quite possible).
With an ample sized convention center the HSBC Arena can FINALLY host an NHL All-Star game and maybe even a Final Four.
If located in the Cobblestone area it feeds off the Inner Harbor, Arena, Casino, modest office/residential development around it, light rail, and CBD parking ramps without becoming a monolith in the heart of the CBD (see: current convention center). This location puts the stadium in a postion to be a truly unique urban football stadium and actually feed off and help add life to its surroundings unlike most urban stadiums and unlike what a stadium on the Outer Harbor would do.
The stadium could be European in a sense. Not too much immediate surface lot space for tailgating. Park in CBD parking ramps (downtown already has parking infrastructure for 60-70,000 people), get drinks at the bars/restaurants and hop on the light rail for free if you’re a bit too far away from the stadium.
Its’ expensive as hell ($800 mil) but if you go half-ass on it you won’t see a good return in the lesser investment (no ability to make the huge money off hosting a Super Bowl, NHL All-Star game, or NCAA Final 4)
And then (while we’re still in La La Land) we can tear down the old convention center and restore Genesee Street to the condition in which it should be.
Okay. Back to reality…
November 8th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
NYC couldn’t even get a stadium out of NYS. Yea Buffalo has a chance alright.
November 9th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Right- carve out a swath of downtown for a facility that is used 10 times/year plus oogles of parking. Talk about a death sentence for where it is located. No thanks- stay in the ‘burbs, domed or not. Imagine all the drunks from a Bills game heading to the casino- what a dynamic. Only in Buffalo.
November 9th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Check out the new development going in around the Patriot’s stadium
http://www.patriot-place.com/inside.asp
November 9th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Here is the question never asked. If you took $800M and spent it on new labs and incentives at the Medical campus versus a sports stadium which would be a better pay off? Is it possible to invest in things that grow the metro so that you can pay for these fun urban toys like stadiums? The medical campus has already shown big returns on a relatively small $100m investment.
November 9th, 2007 at 10:56 am
ha steel…bass pro! anchoring patriot place!
even though it makes more sense to spend 800mil on human captial like the medical campus i dont think there could ever be enough foresight in albany to do something like that.
i guarantee you most ppl in this area would rather have the bills than the best medical campus in the world.
November 9th, 2007 at 11:57 am
kind of like saying you would rather have a Porche even though you can not yet afford a house to live in. The sad truth is that this mentality is not restricted to poor old Buffalo and it runs thick through our society. We pay Paris Hilton Millions a year to make a fool of herself while we pay pennies firemen and police, to the people who protect our lives.
Interesting side note. There is a guy that lives in a rental apartment across from my office. he parks his Bentley on the Street. I saw someone doing the Chicago bump and bang on it trying to fit into a tight space.
November 9th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
My question is why can’t we have both?
I love the idea of expanding the medical campus! But does the money have to come from the public? Why can’t we make it so damn attractive for companies who would locate there TO locate there?
I am not talking about giving them money. Those firms MAKE a ton. I am talking about “charging” them less to do business in the city.
Not sure how to do it but what if Buffalo were to become really cheap to do business? It is not like we do not have the other assets like intellectual capitol, resources, location, infrastructure and the like.
In terms of the convention center/stadium, that is a different beast. That, if done right, brings outside money into the region. Even on a part time basis things like a Super Bowl, Final Four and All Star games bring in outside money.
One idea to help fund a new stadium is seat licenses. Imagine if you could pay for the right to buy tickets for that seat for ANY event. No matter what, you would have the 1st right of refusal. This would apply for Bills games, Concerts, Final Four or Monster truck racing.
Charge 5k per seat and sell off 40k of the 75k-80k seats and make sure there are some good ones left. 40k seats 5k per seat would raise $200 million. I know 5k is a lot but when you think about it, over time it is a wise investment in the potential you can make from selling seats to events you do not go to. Seat licenses to not give you the seats but only the right to buy seats so ticket revenue is not effected.
The next thing that could help the convention center/ stadium construction would be an attached hotel with special amenities that only are provided to those who stay there. Maybe a large “tailgating deck” on a parking structure or “members lounge” of some sorts. You could take the collected bed tax and an additional fee and apply that to the cost of construction. Once the construction is paid off, those funds go to the tourism board.
Think about all of the out of town Bills fans would could come in on Sat night and stay at “THE” hotel for Bills fans from out of town. It would be an awesome environment and worth an extra $20 compared to staying somewhere else downtown.
This would also help encourage out of town fans to be more then commuters to the game and driving home after. While some will still do this, coming to a Bills game would become even more of an event for people in Rochester, S. Ontario, Toronto and Cuse. These people will need to eat and drink as well.
November 10th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
[…] usual, Mark at our sister site All Things Buffalo offers a reasonable take on how we should proceed with th… Check out the comments… Steel, the flamekeeper of the BRO Amen Corner, proceeds to pick Mark […]
November 10th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Mark,
Unfortunately most people in most cities would vote for their sports team over a world class medical research facility. Not likely that the state will chip in for both sports and science in the Buff. Especially since (as I noted) they said take a leap to NYC for the sports part. I am guessing there are a few down-staters who will remember that when it comes time to vote for Buffalo’s stadium.
I could not decipher that comment before this one. Can anyone help?
November 11th, 2007 at 7:33 am
It means another blogger linked to this thread….
Donn Esmonde is on board with the half-baked downtown/waterfront stadium idea. Back to the drawing board.
November 11th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Seems like Esmonde’s anything but on board with the idea the way I read it.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
I was being facetious.
Like he said, moving to the waterfront isn’t going to sell more luxury boxes. What’s the benefit besides ‘new?’
November 11th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
oh,
I did not understand because the commenter makes it seem like we Mark and I are having an argument when we are really just having a discussion. Seemed kind of weird that he would inject such an adversarial slam on me for no reason. I don’t know what an Amen Corner is either.
November 11th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
i think that as time progresses, cities will serve as the entertainment heart of the region more than ever before…and less of a place to live than ever before (outside of specific lifestyles and specific housing types)
so i just feel that downtown should try to get as many amenities as possible to make it a place that people actually care about because honestly…i dont think most people in this region care about DT at all.
toys like this can change that.
w/e.
November 11th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
To most people in the region the city is a dumping ground for social problems. They are quite happy as long as the social problems stay in the city.
November 11th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
That is a tremendous assumption to make, Steel. I’ll argue your point, although I believe it not be 100% true. If that is the case, how is it different from any other region? Does one find a plethora of social service options in Naperville, Oak Park, Evanston, Gelncoe, or WIlmette?
November 11th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
No, cities in general are dumping grounds for the poor, the criminal and the mentally ill. Places like Chicago however are vastly more wealthy than places like Buffalo so they have a certain critical mass of money and means that helps overcome many of the negative affects of concentrations of these social problems.
If this is not true ask yourself which town is going to step up and volunteer to be an alternate location for the sex offender housing proposed for an area west of Buffalo State college. Which town will step up and volunteer to share its school enrollment with the city? Which town will start planning some new low income public housing within its town line?
There was a fight in the town of Wheatfield against a private low income development. The residents never fought any development before this one. One resident stated that these kinds of people belong in the city, as if it was some sort of law of nature that the poor should not venture beyond city limits.
November 12th, 2007 at 11:27 am
^^ and this is precisely the reason the Greater Buffalo area languishes – bad attitudes abound on both sides of the city line. Very few folks seem to grasp, or choose to ignore by matter of convenience or politicking, the concept of regionalism. The suburbanites that have elected to live in complete isolation are spoon fed the idea that the city is a stinking cesspool of abject poverty and run away crime. The neo-urbanites, most in a case of origin denial, elect to deride the suburbs and their residents with snide comments and condescending attitudes. This does nothing but stall address of the myriad crisis at hand and destroy any and all reasonable dialog towards improvement.
How, at its very core, is it different for a suburbanite to rail against low income housing as a “city thing” than it is for an urbanite to wince at surface parking as wasteful and then turn around and say that a stadium with “oogles of parking” and wandering drunks should be out in the suburbs?
I am sorry, but this is a minor example of the attitudes that smack of provincialism and NIMBY mentality. Why a stadium out in the ‘burbs? Why one downtown? Let’s answer this question with logic and good planning rather than bad attitudes and flip dismissal.
Although I do not agree with some of STEEL’s assertions that cities are the dumping ground for social ills since there are plenty of examples floating around in the suburbs and rural areas – they are just less localized and concentrated, I do agree that investing money that would otherwise be spent on a new stadium on the Medical Campus would be the wiser path. In the long run, the economic stability of the City, and by symbiosis, the “suburbs” will better support the concept of hosting a professional sports team and state of the art facility. You need those supporting dollars in the system before you can blow the wad on fun things like a professional sports team.
Regardless of where the stadium is located (or stays) is something that we have to weigh for the good of the region; however, I believe the continued maintenance and or build of a facility, excluding the supporting infrastructure, should be funded in its entirety by private funds. Based on how fervent the region is about the Bills there is no doubt that it can be done, particularly if you have an investment by the owner/owners of the team (assuming the ol’ Jimbo is not talking out his blowhole about aligning himself with folks that have the gumption and the dollars to wrestle the team out of Wilson’s greedy and withered talons).