(07-25-2017 09:21 AM)ken d Wrote: For the life of me, I don't understand the appeal of putting a stadium in downtown Raleigh. Why not put it where most people live? Why not put it where people can get to it easily?
I guess the only reason would be to create an urban renewal project, as a way to extract money from public sources. But if Raleigh wanted to do that, they could do it cheaper and more effectively by subsidizing redevelopment more directly.
As for the lack of public transportation, that hasn't seemed to hurt Carter-Finley Stadium, the PNC Center or the state fairgrounds. Fans are going to drive to this stadium no matter where you put it. Why not put it someplace convenient?
Ken - A downtown stadium is the reason Jim Valvano was crucified back in the late 1980's. Certrain large property owners wanted a downtown stadium because they were enamoroued wiht the New Urbanism and the giant profits they stood to make if sleepy Raleigh could be turned into something that did not roll up the sidewalks at 5:00 PM on Friday.
Valvano wanted the new basketball arena to be on Centenial Campus first, then near the Football Stadium, but not downtown. Parking for Reynolds was problamatic enough and he knew the parking downtown would be detrimental to State's fan base. When Golenbock wrote his hit piece these interests jumped on the chance to remove Jim and Chancelor Poulton. Many of these interests were UNC folks, but not all, and UNC folks did not weild the final knives, those came from NCSU folk invested with and beholded to UNC folk.
This is a key thing to always remember - money and politics are intertwined with the UNC/NCSU/Duke/WF relationship. When a lot of State folks express things that seem paranoid, it's because they fail to realize or do not want to admit the role of money and politics in sport. It's a naive mindset - but that fits engineers and other STEM folks who aren't necessarily adept at self promotion, sales, and image cultivation.
Anyway, this downtown stadium deal is filled with the usual suspect. To top it off they are using BAD urban planning techniques and ignore the fact that Raleigh will never be as dense Manhattan, SF, or inside the Chicago Loop. This is the holy grail - the Jane Addams vision of urbansim that exists in in a few places created by the artificial barriers of islands, and transportation bottlenecks that drive up the value of land using artificial scarcity.
To top it off the NC State college of design and school of architecture is the oddest duck in the South because of their influence from Le Coubsia, and a South American fellow whose name I can never remember. You get better New South, New Urbanism out of VT and Ole Miss architecture schools,. and UNC's planning program.