Ummm....that's four years from now. I'm pretty sure real estate and other malls and resturants are going to pop up around the stadium. That's what Jerry's planning in and around the stadim.
Ummm... that's what they were planning when the ballpark was built there... like 13 years ago. Also, the baseball ballpark draws more people, with more dates, than any football stadium... and makes it more likely to spur development.
Ummm....you're going to compare the Texas Rangers to the Dallas Cowboys!? The most marketable and profitable team in NFL history? Wow...good night nurse.
NO... I'm simply saying that 81 home dates draws bigger/more frequent crowds to a city than 8 home dates. I know the Cowboys are a big deal... just like any NFL team compared to a baseball team not named the Red Sox or Yankees. However, Football stadiums don't spur development like baksetball arenas and baseball stadiums have shown to do... mainly because a team only plays there EIGHT sundays out of the whole year. Unless Jerry Jones is planning on funding all the development out of his own pocket, development because of an NFL stadium is easier said than done.
So you're saying that when Harris County decided to put a domed stadium in the middle of a mosquito basin in Houston, Texas that it didn't spur new businesses? That stadium up in North Texas isn't just going to be home to 8 games out of the year. You're talking Final Fours, soccer matches, regular season College Football games and Bowl Games. They're a already starting construction on new townhomes and Glorypark will be located next to the stadium. Glorypark development Situated next to the future Cowboys stadium, the Glorypark development will combine a mix of retail, entertainment, residential, office and hospitality uses. Glorypark will be built in two phases and will consist of more than 1.2 million square feet of retail, 300,000 square feet of office, high-rise and mid-rise residential, and two hotels. The first phase will be completed in fall 2008. http://www.glorypark.com/become_a_part_of_it.htm
Actually, the Astrodome didn't come close to delivering on some of the "propsosed businesses" that they expected. A lot of that development can be attributed to the simple growth of Houston (610 loop corridor) and the medical center itself. The bottom line is that development is much harder to center around football stadiums than it is baseball and basketball arenas. Victory park was much easier to accomplish because of AAC (which draws the most events of any stadium in the metroplex). Now, Glory(hole) park sounds like they're trying to master-plan the whole thing... and that's likely the only way to do it, instead of simply waiting for the businesses to come (for which they haven't since they built the ballpark there). But don't try to compare the "multiple" events that this stadium will hold to that of a baseball or basketball arena...it will consist of an NFL season (8 home dates), a final four (2 days every 7-8 years at a repeat location), soccer exhibitions (3 a year?), and college football/bowl games (2 a year). Meanwhile, the ballpark sits there for 13 years.... and the best they can do is they build a lake.
This isn't just any 'ol NFL team. That's my point. Don't compare them to the rest of the field. That stadium is going to change everthing around that staduim. And it's already begun to take shape.
But that's exactly my point... you can't say "its all about the NFL team", and then say its going to be a big deal because of all the "other" events they're going to hold there. Frankly, most other stadiums hold all the "other" events, so I agree with you that it being the home of the Cowboys is the main attraction. And if its just about the Cowboys, fine... what happens there from December till August? Are families going to buy summer homes in Cowboy-land to just look at the stadium during the hot months? How are all these businesses/entertainment/retail areas going to make money on a random weekday in July? Is Dallas that boring that they'll come out to Arlington for a fun time near a stadium that won't have an event during the week? Stadiums aren't panaceas.... that has been well documented with all the recent building in all leagues. The development around the stadium will be more dependant on what sort of businesses are nearby that are employing the people who are choosing to move there... than it will on the 8 cowboys games a year. And this isn't some major metropolitan area they're building it in... its 20 minutes away from Dallas. Its like building something of importance in Sugar Land. I don't care if its the Cowboys.
People live in Arlington. Don't know if you know that. There are houses and aparments two minutes away from the ballpark now. The stadium is now creating more business and places to live. Those people who live there now and those who will buy the townhomes and new apartments will visit those new businesses. Is that hard to understand?
We'll see... growth due to a stadium is still as hap-hazzard, and inexact science as they come. You can have all the master-planning in the world, even tie the plans into the financing of the stadium, and still have snags that don't appear on paper. For instance, will people move out to Arlington to buy the new townhomes and new apartments? If so, are they expected to work at the new businesses, or are they commuting to Dallas/FW? Once again, what's the attraction of moving out there when the stadium isn't being used regularly from December till August? Are the people already living in Arlington supposed to buy second homes? Building it is one thing... having the area thrive/grow is completely different.... sustaining it all is even more important/challenging. St. Louis is going thru the same problems with their proposed Ballpark Village... and that village was a big contigency on whether or not they would be allowed to build the new Busch Stadium (ie - the development was basically guaranteed). Right now, there just isn't much incentive/industry for people to move to Downtown St. Louis... and St. Louis is a helluva lot more populated than Arlington.
St. Louis is actually smaller than Arlington by about 30,000 people. http://www.city-data.com/city/St.-Louis-Missouri.html http://www.city-data.com/city/Arlington-Texas.html Arlington is amongst the top 50 cities in the US by population. It just gets forgotten in the metroplex.
Yes... but St. Louis is bigger if you take into account surrounding areas, with St. Louis being the central hub (3 million people). Arlington isn't the central hub of its surrounding areas.
Thank you!!! Someone that actually does research before typing something. Next topic....I'm done with this one.
Nick, I'm not from Dallas or Houston, so I suppose I'm not an expert on this topic, but you're making yourself sound pretty silly. I've not been to Arlington in a while due to living out of state as a student, but you make it seem like Arlington is a ghost town. From what I recall, Arlington has a lot going on right now and a lot of it is in close vacinity to the baseball park that the Rangers play in. Again, it's been a couple of years since I've spent time in Arlington, but...um...there seemed to be a lot of fun stuff to do in that area the last time I was there, all of it in the vacinity of the Ballpark...
Definitely. But if you're trying to build up local business activity, you're generally not relying on people that live 20 or 30 or 50 miles away because those people aren't going to visit that often. Your trying to build up your own city. Arlington is a relatively fast growing city. St. Louis is shrinking. It's not terribly surprising that a downtown revivement would struggle a lot in St. Louis. It's not real clear how this will play out in Arlington. I'm sure they've spent millions on feasibility research and concluded its workable. Whether it really is or not isn't really predictable though at this point. Besides the simple fact that sociologists haven't gotten terribly good at predicting social movement, a lot can change economically over 4 or 5 years.
But didn't they realize its the Cowboys? It has to work! And once again, I'm not saying it can't work... it just simply shouldn't be assumed to be some slam-dunk guarantee/nice little packaged growth in a box.
I'm not trying to characterize Arlington as that at all... I realize what it is... and what it isn't (the stadium is still not being built in Dallas... and that's where Jones originally wanted it to be). I'm simply saying that if development due to stadiums was as easy as it seems... there would be more there in the 13 years since they built the ballpark. Now, since its the Cowboys, "everything should be different...." I'm not going to completely buy into that logic, given that the stadium won't be used as often as the ballpark. FWIW, I knew victory park would be a big deal the second I saw the blueprint for it... they did it right, and that sort of development works great around a busy arena, and in an urban area right near downtown Dallas. The same logic applies to the new Pavilions near Toyota Center.
im not really sure what you are trying to debate. you initially said there is nothing around arlington. one poster already said its a top 50 city in terms of population. you have ft. worth and dallas both 20 minutes or less from it. its already pretty much just one big city. and even with out the stadium being built for the biggest NFL in terms of popularity. within four years arlington would have already grown a lot. but with that stadium obviously stuff will pop up all around it. you wont have skyscrapers (downtown area) around the stadium. but you will have all the hotels, clubs, places to eat, and all the other stuff a normal city would have. so for the most part your pretty much just wrong.
why in the world would you assume that? has it happened around reliant? football stadiums don't lend themselves well to being real estate developers. they host, at most, 12 games a season on Sunday afternoons, primarily. they bring in the occasional big event (Super Bowl, Final 4). they're surrounded by parking spaces. they don't encourage surrounding development in the way that ballparks and arenas do, just as a function of the number of events those facilities host.
