Columbus Crew owner Anthony Precourt has revealed preliminary designs for his proposed new soccer stadium in Austin, and, and … and:
To quote the guy in the back row at my showing of Avengers: Infinity War when the end credits were rolling, “What the fuck was that?” A stadium vaportecture plan is supposed to have swooping architecture and happy clip-art fans and fireworks — oh, so many fireworks — whereas this, this is the Austin American-Statesman art department taking a Google Earth image, applying a “lighten 50%” filter in Photoshop, and then drawing some rectangles on it to represent a stadium. And for this, Precourt gets a feature article in the newspaper.
Things were so bad that even stadium supporters felt obligated to note that the presentation was a bit on the disappointing side:
City Council Member Kathie Tovo noted that there wasn’t much information in the site plan but likes parts of what she saw.
“The three access points are a real positive,” Tovo said. “There are walkways and a parklike feel, and I’m encouraged that the Precourt group is thinking about ways the site can benefit the community.”
This is what journalism has come to: Guy seeking to move soccer team to Austin suggests that roads lead there from three different directions. I know the newspaper business is desperate right now, but I don’t actually think that more people are going to start picking up the American-Statesman to read the soccer box scores, if that’s the plan here.
Parking for literally dozens of fans!
My thinking exactly Mark…. on the other hand, the amount of parking should be sufficient for demand.
And BIKE VALET people!!! Wait til Bengals hear about this…
If their is one thing that I have learned from proposed stadium renderings is that they turn cities instantly walkable, with hundreds/thousands of faceless people waking on streets that would be otherwise be unimaginable to happen, even if there is no good reason to be going to, comming from that location or or even the infrastructure to allow that to happen.
So, message to city councillors everywhere:
If the guy who wants you to build a multipurpose stadium for him on spec is too cheap to spend $15k on reasonable architectural drawings or artist’s impressions of what the stadium he isn’t paying for is supposed to look like….
Run. Run as fast as you can.
Did you hear that one Calgary Flames owners?
Bold of him to draw up his Austin stadium plans despite not even getting to court with the state of Ohio yet
I especially like the detention and biofiltration pond. It sounds like a combination sewage treatment plant and jail.
“soylent green is people…. aaaaaaaaggggghhhhh”
C. Heston
Are those coloured things food trucks? And the pond has trees in it, must be a mangrove carbon sink.
C’mon Austin, you’re underselling it badly. How about a high profile “reveal” of the same pic with some new and more millennial labels?