Precisely As Predicted
By Mitch Berg
“Go ahead, tear down a couple of stores that were half of the commercial heart of the Midway”, said all the people who don’t live in the Midway. “It’ll bring hordes of soccer fans in from their “Urban Life Theme Park” homes in Marcy Holmes and Longfellow over to pre-game at the local bars, and carouse about the place afterward!”
“Trust us!”
I warned ’em. I sincerely tried.
The game day ritual:
- Watch hordes of cars (and a quick surge of people on the train) pack Snelling, Hamline and University, and the neighborhood streets all the way up to Minnehaha, clogging everything for a solid hour.
- A couple of hours of noise and pandemonium and hearing the mob singing “Wonderwall”. By the way, of all the songs they could have picked, why in the flaming hootie-hoo did it have to be “Wonderwall?” I swear, “Afternoon Delight” or “Pilot of the Airwaves” or “Who Let the Dogs Out” or a root canal are less irritating.
- Another hour or two of clogged streets and pedestrians stagging through the neighborhood as they get while the getting’s good. Because nobody wants to be stuck on University outside of a crowd.
One will spend less time waiting for Godot than for the wave of prosperity that professional soccer was supposed to bring to the Midway.
March 12th, 2024 at 12:52 pm
Is that field those fans are crossing something that used to have business which were torn down and now it’s just flat and empty?
March 12th, 2024 at 1:20 pm
Yes, JDM. This is what liberals call progress. the city could have had a Lowe’s there open 7 days a week, 365 days a year employing local yuts but the city fathers built -at some tax payer expense- a ball park open only a few months a year. St. Paul citizens pay for this brilliance. Every. Single. Day.
March 12th, 2024 at 2:11 pm
Saint Paul lost me when they closed O’Gara’s.
Midway lost me when they closed Wards. Does anyone else remember Wards?
March 12th, 2024 at 2:51 pm
No parking ramps for those minivans full of kids coming from Lakeville and Woodbury. They will take mass transit.
March 12th, 2024 at 3:09 pm
Our betters in the Met Council don’t seem to be able to figure out that when a facility is used only 15-20 times per year, that actually means it’s going to have less of an economic benefit for the area than the Lowe’s that it replaced. I can see an argument for having a few stadiums in a city, but I think it’s simultaneously important to tell teams that they will need to learn to share, because the economics of a single team stadium are abyssmal. Teams with similar stadium needs learn to share stadiums, and quite frankly, maybe you need to have the ballpark next to the football stadium so they can share parking amenities, too.
And yes, Chicago, I’m talking about your team and the desire to replace the “Mistake on the Lake”, too.
March 12th, 2024 at 3:18 pm
Well, look for lots more vacant office spaces as the DemoCommies push another tax corporations scheme.
https://www.americanexperiment.org/dflers-push-pointless-extreme-corporate-tax-bill/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Think+About+It+-+Moriarty+fights+to+withhold+evidence+favorable+to+Trooper+Londregan&utm_campaign=Think+About+It+3%2F5%2F24+%28Copy%29
March 12th, 2024 at 3:24 pm
Teams with similar stadium needs learn to share stadiums, and quite frankly, maybe you need to have the ballpark next to the football stadium so they can share parking amenities, too.
We used to call that the Metrodome. But it was dumpy and uncool, so now every team around here has its own spot. Kansas City has adjoining stadiums with a giant parking lot, but they built those 50 years ago and that’s Just Not Done any more.
March 12th, 2024 at 3:52 pm
Mr. D., agreed. That noted, the Ravens and Orioles share parking, and of course Da Bears used to play at Wrigley. All that needs to happen is for taxpayers to say “no more”.
The fact that it doesn’t baffles me, because the real reason for all those new facilities is to get big luxury suites for the rich. So I would expect the middle class and poor to say “OK, we’re going to put our tax money into entertainment for millionaires…..why? I would have to get a new mortgage to buy tickets in the end zone!”.
March 12th, 2024 at 4:00 pm
The fact that it doesn’t baffles me, because the real reason for all those new facilities is to get big luxury suites for the rich. So I would expect the middle class and poor to say “OK, we’re going to put our tax money into entertainment for millionaires…..why? I would have to get a new mortgage to buy tickets in the end zone!”.
A lot of fans never see a game live. As long as the games remain on television and as long as the jerseys reference the preferred geography, it’s easy to keep the scam going.
March 12th, 2024 at 6:53 pm
Oh sure, bunch of naysayers, one little thing goes wrong and you’re all over it. Look, here’s what was proposed to the City in 2016:
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/02/19/urban-village-plan-stpaul-soccer-stadium-site
The stadium got built, the rest will come. Residential, cinema, fitness club, a hotel – it takes time. And who could have forseen the economic havoc caused by Trump, and Covid, and George Floyd, before the Biden Boom got us back on track.
You’re acting as if some slick real estate developer sold the City Council a bill of goods claiming It’s Gonna Be Yuge and Mexico Will Pay For It! That only happens in New York. Or so I’m told.
March 13th, 2024 at 8:20 am
OK, maybe it’s just me., but I find the street view of Google Maps to be especially helpful but also at times very amusing. If you’re not aware of it, the images presented by GSV are dated and may not be consistent from one image to the next.
For example, this image, dated Jun 2019,
https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9551992,-93.1658709,3a,75y,145.33h,89.47t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sBD4uAwHAvx1hDn1rQppj3w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?authuser=0&entry=ttu
shows the stadium and the area from the northwest. That big a55 brown and green Lego building from the Strib is here under construction (you can “turn around” and see).
So, in the lower left of the image, you can see my little Google Guy is pointing south, so let’s walk ahead 100′ or so… (next comment)
March 13th, 2024 at 8:27 am
[Oh, I guess I offended the censor in another way than merely having two links. Whatever.]
… so 100′ later
https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9550607,-93.1659092,3a,75y,168.72h,87.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKv2U9xbwNC1EXvTeHLPkfg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?authuser=0&entry=ttu
and the Rainbow Foods and two strip malls suddenly appear from Aug 2017. There’s a crane in the background so maybe construction on the stadium has begun.
Anyway, my question before about those people walking across an empty field… man, that’s a lot of businesses that needed to be replaced.
March 13th, 2024 at 8:53 am
The whole place looks like a Soviet construction job. Half-thought-out, half-finished, half-assed, fully depressing.
March 13th, 2024 at 8:53 am
Not sure why that got moderated.
March 13th, 2024 at 9:00 am
No worries.
March 13th, 2024 at 9:08 am
Bigman’s made a good point, and it should be noted that there have been a number of attempts to link sports development and other development, and it generally fails because sports facilities aren’t used often enough to keep those businesses afloat. Possibly an exception to this for a baseball ballpark, or maybe for a basketball/hockey arena with multiple teams using it, but definitely not for football or real football.
So yes, we got had by a flim-flam artist, and it’s the neighborhood and the taxpayer who get to suffer.