NFL NFL Stadiums Discussion

[Dirty Bird]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/jan/11/unlv/

The capacity it's being touted to get is only 60,000. But could they have 10,000+ temporary seats to get it beyond the minimum 70,000 required for the game? (University of Pheonix Stadium is 63,400 expandable to 78,600 which hosted Super Bowl 42 and is getting 49)

Would be great to see. The atmosphere in the lead up to the game would be great in Vegas.

But would it get built?
Their primary tennant would be the UNLV Rebels. Their largest crowd this past season vs Nevada drew just the 20,000 (50% of the old stadiums capacity and 33% of the new proposal)

Infact, the old stadium has only cracked 25,000 5 times in the last 3 years.
41,923 - Boise State vs Utah (Dec 22, 2010)
35,720 - Boise State vs Arizona State (Dec 22, 2011)
33,217 - Boise State vs Washington (Dec 22, 2012)
28,958 - Nevada vs UNLV (Oct 2, 2010)
26,281 - Boise State vs UNLV (Nov 5, 2011)

Is it viable?

Where would they make their money from?

Though, I do hope they get it. A super bowl in Vegas would be amazing to say the least.

 

[bjtoby]

Theoretically the increased take by holding a superbowl in Vegas for the town, could almost make extension viable in a couple of games, maybe some struggling teams hold a game there a season?. They talk about the money floating around in big fight nights, and increased take, imagine a Super Bowl, or even a national championship with the new College football setup.

 

[stugots]

Is it viable?

Where would they make their money from?

touted new franchise - The Las Vegas Strip

 

[Exe Gesis]

NFL wants nothing to do with proposed Las Vegas stadium

The city of Las Vegas is exploring the possibility of building a massive new “Mega-Event Center” on the UNLV campus that would rival Cowboys Stadium in regards to its size and excess. The stadium would be able to host a number of major events if it is built, although it’s still in the development phase right now and hasn’t been approved.

Proponents of the stadium plan have floated the possibility of the NFL bringing the Pro Bowl or preseason games to the new stadium as possible events that could generate nearly $400 million in money for the city.

One little problem remains, however, the NFL’s approval.

According to Alan Snel of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the league would likely not consider hosting any events in Las Vegas due to sports gambling.
The league would need to approve Las Vegas as a location of any preseason game to be held in the city. With the NFL still fighting the state of New Jersey with a lawsuit to keep sports gambling out of the Garden State, the league would look pretty hypocritical for looking to host events in Las Vegas.

New York Giants owner John Mara has said he doesn’t believe “there is a chance in the world” the NFL would allow another Super Bowl to be hosted at Metlife Stadium if they fail to win their lawsuit against the state of New Jersey. If the NFL is unwilling to allow one of the most powerful owners in the league to host another Super Bowl in the largest media market in the country because of sports gambling, the thought Las Vegas would be able to host any NFL event is pretty much zero.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Future NFL stadiums could feature less sitting, more standing

Our pal Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times has written an article that looks at the various challenges the NFL is facing. One of the biggest arises from persuading fans to choose to attend games over watching them at home.

Late in the item comes an intriguing prediction about the configuration of future NFL stadiums, courtesy of NFL executive V.P. of business operations Eric Grubman.

“What if a new stadium we built wasn’t 70,000, but it was 40,000 seats with 20,000 standing room?” Grubman said. “But the standing room was in a bar-type environment with three sides of screens, and one side where you see the field. Completely connected. And in those three sides of screens, you not only got every piece of NFL content, including replays, Red Zone [Channel], and analysis, but you got every other piece of news and sports content that you would like to have if you were at home.

“Now you have the game, the bar and social setting, and you have the content. What’s that ticket worth? What’s that environment feel like to a young person? Where do you want to be? Do you want to be in that seat, or do you want to be in that pavilion?”

Plenty of people would choose to be in the pavilion, if the price is right. (And if the beer isn’t priced quite so high.)

Grubman’s example, with a 70,000-seat stadium becoming a 60,000-person hybrid, reflects another inevitable reality for the NFL. To maintain the buzz of a full stadium, stadiums may need to get smaller.

“A restaurant isn’t as good if there’s only four people in there,” 49ers CEO Jed York said. “When a restaurant is hustling and bustling, it just feels better, the food tastes better because you see everybody else enjoying it. That’s the same thing for any live event. Great bands, if you don’t have a great crowd, then the band isn’t quite as good.”

He’s right — and it’s wise for the league to continuously be thinking about ways to adapt the business model to ensure that business continues to thrive, not only on TV but inside each and every stadium.

 

[Broken]

Seems like a change in direction from the all-purpose stadium experience that most of the newer stadiums tended to be based around.

Las Vegas would be OK for the Pro Bowl, but the Superbowl should also be a reward for a team/city giving it to Las Vegas turns the game in to a gimmick.

 

[usalion]

Vegas? No way. The NFL won't touch it because of the gambling there. Would be too much of a temptation for the team to get involved with that, which the league does not want. Can't even see it as a potential SB site, as it would eb one game. How many other events would you have that could fill up the stadium? Doesn't make sense.

As for the standing area idea for the stadium, this might well have merit. As a former member of the Queensland Cricketers' Club, I know we had several hundred members that would come and sit inside for the big cricket and footy matches, enjoying having the bar and restaurant available to them.

I really like what Philadelphia did with teh baseball stadium- behind the lower level of seats, at the front edge of the concourse, they set up long tables with bar type chairs, so folks could sit and watch the game and have a place to put their food and drink. It would take some careful planning, but I could see areas set up like this on three or four levels, with a bar behind it and televisions on the side.

The cost will again be the key here. To be honest, a lot of folks are being driven away from major sports because thy simply can't afford to pay for a ticket, much less take an entire family and pay for parking, food and other extras. If teams can set up family friendly areas in their stadiums, maybe we'll see a resurgence- otherwise, the NFL might go like the NRL, with good television ratings, but generally small attendances.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Falcons stadium ideas move in previously unseen directions

There’s been a lot of discussion of late about ways to create NFL stadium experiences unique enough to entice fans to part with money for tickets instead of watching the games on their widescreen HDTVs.

360 Architecture has come up with a few novel proposals as they work on ideas for the new Falcons stadium that they’ve been charged with building. The firm unveiled some of their thoughts and concept art on Tuesday and there are definitely some innovations that we haven’t seen before, including the “oculus” hole in the roof you see at right which would rotate open like a camera shutter depending on the weather and needs for the event going on inside the stadium. WSB in Atlanta has computerized renderings of that roof and some other design possibilities in action.

Cool enough, but probably not something that’s going to get people to go to games all by itself. The company also proposes adding “impact seats” that would vibrate alongside big hits on the field to give the game a dimension you can’t easily simulate on the couch unless you’ve got a really hyperactive toddler. There’s also talk of a bar spanning the entire length of the field and a lengthy package of ideas, via the Georgia World Congress Center which voted to approve a contract from the architects, from the architects promises “football in the round” as part of the concept for the stadium.

“We want to get the fan back to the game and it has to be about the game or about the event,” said Bill Johnson, lead architect on the stadium project, to WSB. “I don’t think skimp is a word that will be used a lot.”

Much can and will change between the design stage and the finished product, but starting off at a place of great innovation should lead to at least small steps forward when construction is complete.

 

[Dirty Bird]

That photo
Not disgusting
Just interesting and weird
But I just get the sense that it'll feel like standing next to Beijing Olympic Stadium. Just looking epic and amazing.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Vikings stadium design to be unveiled on Monday

On Monday night, the Vikings will share with the public for the first time the design of the team’s new stadium.

But you don’t need a ticket to the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis to see it happen. The event will stream live on the team’s official website.

The biggest question about the stadium comes from whether the roof will be retractable. It’s a feature that would allow some September and October games to be played under the open air of Minnesota.

By November, however, chances are that the conditions will be less than ideal for sliding the roof open.

 

[drd23]

More images can be found here

It looks pretty amazing, and will be especially so during a snow storm imo. Also, the stadium is connected by the "skyway" system of covered walkways that Minneapolis has so people will be able to walk to the stadium from the CBD no matter the weather

 

[Woodson]

Vikings stadium design to be unveiled on Monday

The biggest question about the stadium comes from whether the roof will be retractable. It’s a feature that would allow some September and October games to be played under the open air of Minnesota.

By November, however, chances are that the conditions will be less than ideal for sliding the roof open.

Looks terrific.

Forget the roof sliding... looks like it's Blinds... great Vikings avatar advertised there GG.. wonder which of the Vikes fans will snap it up first?

 

[Chadwiko]

That stadium literally looks like the Church of Purple Jesus

 

[Exe Gesis]

Roof of new Vikings stadium is self-cleaning

The Vikings’ new stadium has a large glass roof. Which raises a fair question.

Who will clean the bird droppings and stuff that could land on the roof?

“The [ethylene tetrafluoroethylene] product is self-cleaning,” Vikings V.P. of public affairs/stadium development Lester Bagley recently told Bob Sansavere of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “It’s the largest clear roof in the world and the first on a stadium in the U.S. There are some in Europe.”

Bagley explained that the self-cleaning will be accomplished by “rain and moisture.” Which makes the roof “self-cleaning” in the same way parking a car in the rain makes the vehicle “self-washing.”

The sloped roof also should cause snow to slide off; then again, the roof of my house is sloped, but the snow doesn’t slide off. Then again, given what happened at Cowboys Stadium during Super Bowl week in early 2011, maybe the Vikings don’t want the snow or ice to slide off.

“There’s a basin that catches the snow and prevents it from going down to the street,” Bagley said. “It slides off the roof into a gutter, essentially, and it breaks up from there. It will be very safe.”

Regardless of the details, designers surely engineered the building to withstand and manage the elements. After what happened in Minnesota late in the 2010 season, no one reasonably can claim that they didn’t know the roof of the football stadium could be self-opening.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Eagles to expand stadium, with hopes for a Philly Super Bowl

The Eagles have unveiled plans to expand and improve Lincoln Financial Field, with an eye on not only improving the experience for season-ticket holders, but also convincing the rest of the league that Philadelphia could host an outdoor Super Bowl.

Plans include expanding the stadium by 1,600 seats, adding HD video boards, making wi-fi available to fans and installing bridges to connect both sides of the upper concourse.

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie says he’ll be keeping an eye on next year’s New York/New Jersey Super Bowl and hoping that it shows an outdoor stadium in a cold city can host the game.

“We’re going to watch that very carefully,” Lurie said, via PhillyBurbs.com. “I’m sure we’ve all been at phenomenal football games outside in December and January. So, absolutely, root for a decent-weather day in New York and New Jersey and we think we’ve got a great city here to host it, a great stadium, and I’m sure others feel the same way.”

As comments from Lurie and from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel show, a successful outdoor Super Bowl in New Jersey next year will result in several other cold cities wanting to host the Super Bowl, too.

 

[Dirty Bird]

Yay, lets make Temple games even more hollow

 

[Dirty Bird]

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/news/...t-Stages/c24672aa-8ced-4e77-9d30-00fa6e3ee794

The Atlanta Falcons announced today the completion of a conceptual design of the new Atlanta stadium and plans to immediately move into the schematic design phase of the project. These actions follow conceptual design approval today by the Georgia World Congress Center Board of Governors, as required by the new stadium memorandum of understanding.

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/news/...t-Stages/c24672aa-8ced-4e77-9d30-00fa6e3ee794

 

[Beetlebum]

Looks good, a touch of Wembley Stadium about it..maybe it's the red seats.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Here's a very good read on stadium costs....

How Stadium Construction Costs Reached the Billions

By Andrew Cohen
August 2012


21 Comments

(AP Photo/James D. Smith)

In some circles, outrage accompanied the 2001 opening of Miller Park, the Milwaukee Brewers' new home. The state senator who cast the deciding vote in favor of a sales-tax increase to pay the public's $290 million portion of the construction cost had been recalled in a public referendum, and three workers had died after a crane collapsed, delaying the stadium's scheduled opening by a year. The stadium's fan-shaped retractable roof proved problematic, necessitating a $13 million fix paid for by a settlement reached between the Miller Park Stadium District and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of America, averting further litigation. That one signature element was a prime culprit in the stadium's ultimate $400 million construction cost, at the time the second-highest price tag for a new professional baseball stadium.

Over in the National Football League, little outrage accompanied the opening of Detroit's Ford Field or Houston's Reliant Stadium in 2002. The two buildings featured a fixed roof and a retractable fabric roof, respectively, and both were very much in line, cost-wise, with other state-of-the-art buildings of the time. Ford Field, designed to incorporate a neighboring warehouse, came in at $430 million, while Reliant's much-simplified retractable roof design kept the building's cost at $352 million, putting the two venues third and fourth at the time on the list of professional football stadium construction cost.

Ten years later, and it's nowhere near adequate to say that the ante has been upped. A handful of team owners have raised and re-raised, and now the size of the pot is such that there's no space on the table to deal the cards. The three newest pro football stadiums have cost $720 million (Lucas Oil Stadium, 2008), $1.15 billion (Cowboys Stadium, 2009) and $1.6 billion (MetLife Stadium, 2010). Major League Baseball hasn't seen quite that level of inflation, but it has produced the three most expensive ballparks in history in 2008 (Nationals Park, $611 million) and 2009 (Citi Field, $900 million; Yankee Stadium, $1.5 billion). Perhaps it's worth noting that MLB's newest venue, four-month-old Marlins Park — the league's sixth to feature a retractable roof, and its smallest in total seating capacity — cost a mere $515 million. On the other hand, the stadium's complicated financing plan (currently being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission), will lead to a final public cost to repay debt incurred by the stadium's construction of $2.4 billion over the next 40 years.

Okay: For the purposes of comparison, debt service probably has no place in this discussion. (Only God and Jerry Jones know what the ultimate cost of Cowboys Stadium will be, and neither is talking.) Not that making comparisons is easy, considering that some but not all of the figures that enter the public sphere include financing charges, design and consulting fees, and land acquisition costs — or even if they all do, they might not reflect the same accounting methods. "You really have to avoid confusing hard costs and soft costs," says Bill Palmer, vice president of business development in Hunt Construction Group's Indianapolis office. "A lot of times people quote numbers, and they're not pure construction costs — those numbers are pretty erroneous, I'd say, from what the true costs are."

But with the figures quoted these days nowhere near Marlins territory, it's questionable whether differences in accounting could actually account for the huge jump in costs. The Minnesota Vikings' Legislature-approved new home carries a price tag of $975 million, and that budget doesn't include making its dome retractable (which the team's owners, who would have to pay the $50 million it'd cost to do it, are still considering). The 49ers' new digs, currently being dug in Santa Clara, Calif., will have 68,500 seats, 165 suites and a green rooftop deck (green as in, solar panels and herbs to be used for onsite food prep), and is budgeted at $1.2 billion. Two groups of Angelenos are vying to become the preferred developers of a stadium to serve as the home field of a yet-to-be-attracted NFL franchise; one site, near City of Industry, would bear an $800 million price tag if it were built, as first conceived, with two-thirds of its stands on a hillside, thereby saving greatly on expensive steel and concrete. The other (downtown) location, so far along in its planning that it has already attracted Farmers Insurance as a title sponsor, is budgeted at $1.2 billion and includes 75,000 seats and a retractable roof, even though it purportedly never rains in southern California.

Macroeconomics might suggest that prices could fall during recessions, as the supply of materials suddenly outstripped demand. Unfortunately, it's not so simple: Beginning in late 2008, for example, credit dried up, consumer purchases dropped like a stone and manufacturers cut back on production — and businesses from all sectors, from architects to construction companies to producers of raw materials, laid off workers. Prices of raw materials did, in fact, continue to rise as huge overseas growth kept demand high (particularly for steel), but as the world economy has since faltered, prices have stabilized (although they haven't dropped).

Kent McLaughlin of Kansas City, Mo.-based 360 Architecture, which partnered on the design of the $1.6 billion MetLife Stadium, claims a "tiny economic brain," but believes that widespread self-interest is a major factor. "I think it speaks to the way Americans do business," he says. "With the economic downturn, companies decided they needed to continue to make the same money they were used to, so if you used to pay $85 for each stadium seat, now it's $105 or $115 rather than, say, $80. It's the make-believe money we all operate on. Your Chrysler car hasn't gone down in price even after the government bailout, and they're making money hand over fist. What the heck?"

McLaughlin's surprise is more than matched by widespread sticker shock within the sports industry and among the public at large. It doesn't help that when insiders make assertions about the primary cause of inflation — more on this below — inevitably more than one recent stadium fails to fit the theory. Consider the various contributing factors which, together, might help explain how hundreds of millions morphed into billions:

• Big and bigger. "It's the overall size of these things," says Hunt construction manager Eric Schreiner. "Owners keep wanting more and newer and better kinds of amenities in them, and it keeps adding to the cost." Total square footage "is going up pretty dramatically," agrees Bryan Trubey, principal and director of HKS Sports & Entertainment Group in Dallas, noting in particular Cowboys Stadium's astonishing 2.7 million square feet.

Cowboys Stadium is, however, in a league of its own with regard to size. While the most recent stadiums are generally bigger than the previous generations of buildings, the difference isn't vast — on the high end, an increase more on the order of 20 to 30 percent. For example, 1.9-million-square-foot Reliant Stadium cost $352 million in 2002; built six years later for $720 million, Lucas Oil Stadium comprises 1.9 million square feet. Slightly older pro football stadiums ranged from 1.1 million square feet (LP Field, 1999) to 1.6 million square feet (M&T Bank Stadium, 1998), while the even older and presumed-obsolete Georgia Dome (1992) contains 1.6 million square feet of space. Moreover, the planned stadiums aren't much larger than that — the 49ers' stadium in Santa Clara will be 1.85 million square feet, while the Vikings' proposed stadium as currently configured would be 1.7 million.

Among baseball stadiums, much has been made of new Yankee Stadium's 63 percent jump in square footage over its predecessor (which opened in 1923), but there has hardly been a huge increase in size over the past decade. Citi Field (1.2 million square feet), Nationals Park (1.1 million) and Target Field (1 million) aren't significantly far off from earlier venues PETCO Park (2004, 1.3 million), PNC Park (2001, 970,000) and AT&T Park (2000, 967,000) — about 15 percent larger, as a group.

• Premium zones. Seating capacities are smaller, but the footprints are bigger. What there's more of is premium space that includes suites, club sections, bars, restaurants and other retail establishments. "We talked to a baseball owner about six months ago who's looking at renovating a venue, and the plan was to add 25 restaurants and bars," Palmer says. "I mean, nobody went to a bar inside a stadium 20 years ago. You went to a game and then you left right after. They try to keep you captured in these venues; they give you as much stuff to do there as you possibly can, so you'll spend more money there."

"The building is just a different building than it used to be," says Dan Mehls, director of project development with Mortensen Construction, which built Target Field. "Fifteen, 20 years ago, it was just about having a big volume of space to watch games. Now it's about the whole fan experience. There are two $10 million video boards instead of one $500,000 video board, and big club areas where 3,000 people can sit in a big fancy restaurant. It's just night and day."

• The finished product. A higher level of finishes is apparent throughout the newest stadiums. "In basic, municipal-style venues there's a lot of exposed structure, block walls, and then the owner will spend money on the entrance experience and premium areas like suites, but after that it's all exposed structure," says Mehls. "Pro team owners want to cover up all the structure with high-level finishes and expensive technology, so that's a big variable."

"There are a greater number of high-end finished spaces, the team areas are more extensive," adds McLaughlin. "What's being offered to the patron is of better quality. Instead of a stainless-steel or wood counter, now you see quartz and granite, things like that. Those things cost 'x' dollars a square foot more, and it adds up."

McLaughlin pauses, considering MetLife Stadium.

"MetLife didn't have one particular thing that stands out in my mind, but there was a lot of keeping up with the Joneses: If you have four giant scoreboards, I have to have four giant scoreboards," he says. "Technology in general has changed, where 80,000 people using cell phones now drives owners to provide more equipment, more wireless access points. MetLife just added 500 more access points than we originally programmed only six years ago, because the demand is there. We can spend $100 million in technology on a job, and then have to add another $5 million to it just to keep up with patrons who want to be able to get apps on their phone and call grandma from the game."

• Indoor-outdoor. Retractable roofs seem like the biggest 'keep up with the Joneses' of them all, given that many teams appear to build them without a clear need to play games both indoors and outdoors. And they can be a very expensive item, both because of the roof itself — its panel configuration and the technology required to open and close it — and the additions to the stadium structure and mechanical systems that its use requires. "Open-air buildings have a smaller amount of exterior skin, and they're completely missing 80 percent of the mechanical systems needed to air-condition the space," Trubey says. "That's a big chunk of change right there."

But, Trubey is quick to add, technological improvements have limited the costs associated with certain types of roofs. "Several things influence the cost of retractable roofs: the size of the opening, the weight of the structure and the type of mechanism that you use. It's not a straight-line equation," he says. "For instance, the roof opening of Lucas Oil Stadium is larger than the one at Reliant Stadium, but it was a lot less expensive because for reasons of building character we had structure going through the opening."

• Structural materials. The proliferation of roofs, retractable or fixed, and the expansion of building footprints have combined to add to the amount of steel and concrete used, which means higher materials and (especially with regard to concrete) labor costs. And, as McLaughlin says, "Steel just goes up in price, it doesn't come down. Everything keeps creeping up."

• Site work. Costs centering on building sites should be more or less stable from one decade to another, but many of the newly built or planned stadiums have been in tricky locations requiring extra dollars. Don Dethlefs, CEO of Denver-based Sink Combs Dethlefs, mentions more-stringent seismic requirements in California as adding to the costs of stadiums there (and in Las Vegas and a few other locales), as well as factors that influence costs on a case-by-case basis. Target Field in Minneapolis, for example, was "wedged in by viaducts on a very tight site," he notes, while even a new Vikings stadium located on available land next to the Metrodome will require a phased demolition and construction that will surely add to costs there. Added to which, Dethlefs says, "Even the spaces around the buildings are getting more lavish; people are spending way more on plazas and other finished outdoor spaces. You take an NFL stadium these days, and you see a much larger perimeter, paving and artwork — you can end up spending millions just on the site."

• The coastal effect. MetLife Stadium was built on available land and doesn't have a roof. "Yeah, but that's the East Coast," Mehls interjects. "It's a whole different world than the rest of the country." How much of a different world? "It's the most expensive place to build," Dethlefs says. "When you add New York into the equation, it skews the numbers by 30 or 40 percent. Los Angeles is the same, and then you add all the seismic requirements. On the coasts and in the Big Three cities in particular, you're definitely going to pay more per square foot."

"In New York, we used to double the price," McLaughlin adds. "Now it's triple the price — and the San Francisco area is similar."

• Local flavor. See above, but don't expect anyone to talk very freely about it. Cities with large concentrations of union labor in particular get a bad rep. "Dealing with three or four union trades definitely has an impact," McLaughlin says. "You need somebody to make it, somebody to drive it, somebody to unload it off the truck, somebody else to erect it."

Similarly, John Hutchings, an HKS principal, cites cheap labor as a reason that Cowboys Stadium was "such a bargain," preferring to focus on the stadium's $850 million hard cost. But, he says, the issue isn't so much unions — even with some estimates tabbing union labor as adding anywhere from 10 percent to 30 or 35 percent on the high end — as it is with wage rates that vary regionally.
On this, McLaughlin concurs. "It's just the cost of doing business, as generic as that sounds," he says. A construction manager with ongoing business interests in the Northeast is willing to be more specific, though off the record: "In a major metropolitan area, it's what it costs to get projects approved and permitted, street and lane closure fees — fees for everything — as well as all the different levels of consultants that get added to these kinds of challenging projects. There are layers of costs, layers of inefficiencies that the rest of the country doesn't experience, and there's a premium associated with all of that."

Were you to add up all the costs associated with each of these elements, it probably still wouldn't explain the final cost of most of the stadiums mentioned here — with the possible exception of Cowboys Stadium. ("You see where they spent the money in Dallas," says Dethlefs. "It's obvious.") Many designers and contractors sound just as unsure as laypeople about where the money has gone. "I don't know that we've seen an exponential increase in per-square-foot cost basis," says McLaughlin. "The difference is millions, not hundreds of millions."

Palmer says the shock felt by the public is more than understandable, since team owners themselves are often shocked by the price escalation. "What happens is one team owner comes to talk to another team owner, in Indianapolis, say, and he wants to put a venue in another city just like the one he sees here," Palmer says. "The owner in Indy says, 'Well, I built that 10 years ago for $200 million,' and the second owner says, 'Well, I'll just pick that up and put it here, put in an escalation factor.' You take one stadium someplace else and it's more than double, and you're shocked. Kind of typical in our industry, that people don't realize there's such a huge disparity between Florida and New York and Minneapolis and Kansas City. Every project is unique; you can't just plug and play."

But then, Palmer asks, should rising prices really surprise anybody?

"The numbers are mind-boggling, there's no question about it," he says. "But whoever thought we could top the Superdome, the eighth wonder of the world when it was built? It just shows you that what was state of the art then is archaic now."

 

[Exe Gesis]

Vikings stadium will be losing some bells and whistles

To no surprise, the new Vikings stadium will cost more than originally imagined, as envisioned. So they’ll come up with a way to cover the extra costs, right?

Actually, it’s officially time to start throwing stuff out of the balloon basket.

According to Richard Meryhew of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, features are being trimmed from the new stadium.

Initially at risk are a 400-stall parking garage to be located a block north of the stadium, a skyway linked to a ramp a block south of the stadium, two large escalators, and up to 40 feet from the height of pivoting glass doors to be located at the main entrance.

“We only have $975 million in the budget, and there’s only so many things you can get under that number,” Vikings V.P. of stadium wrangling Lester Bagley said.

The Vikings have advanced $13.1 million to fund the cost overruns, and a $62 million contingency fund exists. Still, the message is that the powers-that-be won’t find a way to make the right stadium — but to make a stadium at the right cost.

Apparently, those Stadium Builders Licenses don’t go as far as they used to.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Dolphins close to a stadium renovation “deal”
Posted by Mike Florio on June 8, 2014, 2:57 PM EDT

Getty Images
The Miami Dolphins are closing in on agreement with Miami-Dade County regarding upgrades at Sun Life Stadium. But the final deal will hardly reflect the terms the team initially envisioned.

Last year, the Dolphins wanted to get public money to help pay for renovations that would put South Florida back in the Super Bowl rotation. The effort to increase a local hotel/motel tax failed. Miserably.

Then, the Dolphins wanted real estate tax credits for the land occupied by the stadium and parking lots, in exchange for upgrades privately funded by owner Stephen Ross. Again, the effort failed. Miserably.

The end result, as Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Giminez explained to CBS Miami, entails certain grants/incentives that will be made available if/when Ross lures the Super Bowl and similar attractions to town with renovations he pays for out of his own very deep pockets.

“[If he brings certain marquee events in, we could give him grants for bringing that in,” Gimenez said. “But the grants are much smaller than the economic impact of that event.”

The economic impact of events like the Super Bowl remain debatable, especially in light of all the richest-get-richer stuff that an interested city must offer in order to have a chance at landing the event.

The incentives/grants to the Dolphins would consist of a chunk of the money generated by tourist taxes. CBS Miami estimates that, for example, the Dolphins would get $4 million if the Super Bowl returns to town.

“You’re pretty close,” Giminez said about the estimate, “but I’m not going to say what that is because we haven’t finalized those negotiations yet, but they are pretty close to being final.”

The deal would include an annual cap, which as a practical matter would give the Dolphins an incentive to space out the events. If too many happen in one year, the Dolphins quickly will reach the point of not diminishing but disappearing returns.

Ultimately, the perks for Miami have diminished greatly over what the team had wanted. The lesson for the other 31 teams is that significant public money comes only when there’s a real chance that the franchise will be disappearing to a new city.

 

[Exe Gesis]

Levi’s lethargy, Part 1: Four months in, something is not quite right with Santa Clara’s Dead Red Stadium

Posted on December 6, 2014 by Tim Kawakami

This is Part 1. (Actually Part 1 was my column wondering when and if this stadium would ever be a raucous home-field advantage for the 49ers, though I didn’t know it was Part 1 at the time.)

Part 2 will come next week, probably, and go point-by-point through the ways the stadium’s arrival has complicated and exacerbated the 49ers management turmoil with Jim Harbaugh.



-It’s a very impressive new building, full of cutting-edge doo-dads, comfortable red seats and extravagant clubs, but Levi’s Stadium isn’t quite what its builders thought it’d be.

In only four months of operation, it’s pretty safe to conclude: Levi’s is a fine structure, looks spectacular from most angles (if you avert your eyes from the grass field)… but it’s just a football stadium. A nice one, but not a revolution-by-steel-pillar.

It was meant to be a $1.3B totem for a new era in Silicon Valley and Northern California and the world–or at the least a football version of AT&T Park or a comparable entity to Seattle’s CenturyLink Field (and believe me, the 49ers wanted to blow away both buildings)–and it’s been open for 14 events and it’s not totemic.

Unless you want to use it as a symbol of the 49ers’ growing problems–they built a new stadium, after decades of trying, and they couldn’t get the field right? What does that say about the operation overall?–this stadium doesn’t have an iconic feel to it, not at all.

We’re just four months into its existence, and we already know that the 49ers’ new stadium doesn’t have the atmosphere, the home-field advantage, the fervor, the impact of any of the great new stadiums in North America, just from a football point of view.

Here’s what it looked like just as last night’s Pac-12 title game was getting started…


* Screenshot courtesy of @peterhartlaub.

If I could compare it to anything, I’d say the Santa Clara building is a down-sized version of Jerry Jones’ Dome in North Texas–which doesn’t have a great atmosphere but more of a Extra-Cushiony Space Colony On Jupiter kind of unique feel to it.

The Cowboys’ monstrosity is intentional–it’s luxury beyond luxury, size conquering all imagination, and they’ve established it as all that.

Or Levi’s is a bigger, more extravagant version of the new Stanford Stadium, which is pretty much no-frills except the new seats, suites and sightlines. Not a lot of teams fear going into Stanford Stadium–or worried about the cavernous old one, either, frankly.

Levi’s is… workable. It is nice. It is fine to watch a game (unless you’re on the East side baking in the sun). It is a money machine.

But… Something is wrong here.

It’s not just about the troubles with the grass field–they’ve now put down five fields since August, and last night was only the 14th game at the place–but that’s part of it, too.

And the field STILL was terrible last night. Fair to ask: If they couldn’t get the field right–the FIELD–to start off the Levi’s experience, what else did they get wrong that we don’t know about yet?

* There is nothing very special about Levi’s Stadium other than its ability to make the York family millions and millions of dollars, and now in the middle of its first year, this stadium is getting a national reputation from both 49ers games and the other contests Levi’s has brought in.

It’s Dead Red Stadium.

There’s no life, no ambience, no outside meaning to it, and lots of empty red seats.

Maybe that’s because the PSLs and overall enormous ticket prices have driven out the most passionate fans and turned the stadium to corporate expense accounts and a lounge-lizard mentality.

Maybe the Santa Clara site just attracts a different type of fan–and that fan is new to the NFL scene or is different than anything Candlestick brought, or that CenturyLink brings.

But through six regular-season 49ers home games, it is notably bland in there.

Let’s just say here: The Yorks and Santa Clara had every right to build a stadium that mostly or only serves to make the Yorks money and also gives the players and coaches better facilities.

But there are some (unexpected) side effects to this…

It’s not AT&T Park, still majestic after 15 seasons of baseball. Still a destination. Still important.
Levi’s is not Candlestick Park–it’s far more useful than the ‘Stick and it isn’t a dump, but Candlestick had wild energy and all those memories; now the Levi’s stands are filled with corporate look-at-mes who don’t return to their seats for most of the second half… to get out of the burning sun and just to mingle in the clubs or the broad pavilion.

Oh, there’s a museum. That costs extra money.

As Jon Wilner put it leading up to the Pac-12 title game between Oregon and Arizona: The choosing of this neutral site for the game is already pretty much a flop and they are contracted to play there for a few more years.

(That’s another possible nickname for this place, up to and including 49ers games: Levi’s Neutral Site.)

And interestingly, Jed York himself recently gave the opening season a “B.”

Let’s be fair and say that all new buildings have bugs here and there; you just don’t know where the problems will be until you open the doors and see what breaks. The 49ers will assuredly grow into the building and this building will probably grow on all this. Over time. Eventually.

At some point, this might be considered something more than a neutral site for all involved.

But that was not at all the plan for Levi’s.
York and Santa Clara leaders thought this stadium would draw fans just by itself and would energize the 49ers fan base from the moment the team took the field this season.

The 49ers are 3-3 in the place. The coach might be gone soon. The stands were half-empty for a prized college game last night.

And it’s all hard to ignore.

Not even a half-year old, we can safely conclude that it is really not that.

 

[Exe Gesis]

You cant expect a crowd that spends $350 for a ticket to yell as loud as a crowd in a place where they are paying $40
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From what i've seen in other blogs, it seems like they priced out alot of their die hard fans. Avg Joe's just cant afford those prices.
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The people going under the pavilion or leaving at the half is what really destroys the atmosphere and only non-fans really do that. Realize that these people bought seat licenses that cost a fortune on top of purchasing tickets. A huge % of these fans must be from a more affluent demo and they're not likely the same fan base as the old Candlestick crowd.
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I like the term used by a commenter: Lethargy Stadium. Mark was/is looking into a much smaller stadium. I say a football stadium doesn't need bells and whistles. About all it needs is good bathrooms, parking lots for some tailgaiting, close to field, seats that aren't broken, access off freeway or BART. I don't even like the extra big screen that all the new stadia have--I see the lure of it so that people with bad seats can look at some plays and replays can be seen by the crowd, but it wouldn't kill me if a retro stadium didn't have one. All eyes need to be on the field for the atmosphere to be great.
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Surprisingly, the sun is having a huge impact on the vibe in that stadium. They should have oriented the field differently, so an open air end zone was in the east, with fewer people baking in the afternoon sun. Ha ha, too bad Niners.
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ive been to a lot of different stadiums and i dont understand people complaining about stadiums. there are two things i want from a stadium:
1) field visibility
2) lots of toilets
does anything else really matter?

 

[Exe Gesis]

League approves record debt for Falcons
Posted by Mike Florio on December 16, 2014, 9:34 AM EST

Getty Images
As the cost of the new Falcons stadium continues to go up and up (and up), owner Arthur Blank has obtained a dispensation from his colleagues to borrow more money than NFL teams are permitted to borrow.

According to Daniel Kaplan of SportsBusiness Journal, NFL owners have agreed to waive league rules limiting the amount of debt (which some would describe as “making it up as they go”) so that the Falcons can borrow a whopping $850 million.

The problem comes from the increases expense of the project, which spiked from $1 billion to $1.2 billion in 2013 — and then from $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion earlier this year. As explained by Kaplan, it’s unclear whether the Falcons will be borrowing the full $850 million now, or whether they asked for the higher ceiling in anticipation of needing to borrow more later.

The enhanced debt underscores the unanticipated increase in building expenses. Which ultimately could result in reduced payroll expenses, if Blank decides to hold accountable anyone/everyone responsible for a project that is spiraling out of control.

 

[Dirty Bird]

It's nice to be cared about by the NFL.
We can build a world class stadium, yet teams like Oakland can't get s**t.