Thanks to those who’ve re-upped as FoS supporters in recent days without my reminding you. There are still a handful of numbered Vaportecture art prints left, so donate now if you think that’s the kind of thing you’d like, or if you don’t want that thing near your house at all but just want to support the work of this site.
Speaking of work, there’s a whole lot of it today:
- Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have confirmed they are indeed focusing on a new domed stadium in suburban Brook Park, releasing a statement yesterday saying, “The transformative economic opportunities created by a dome far outweigh what a renovated stadium could produce with around 10 events per year.” The statement also said that “this stadium will not use existing taxpayer-funded streams that would divert resources from other more pressing needs,” which neatly obscures the fact that it would use $1.2 billion in new taxpayer-funded streams that would divert resources from other more pressing needs. And headlines like “It’s official: Cleveland Browns moving to Brook Park” remain premature, since nobody in state or local government has approved the $1.2 billion in tax money yet, so really we’re still just at “Browns owners’ #1 choice is someone giving them $1.2 billion,” and who wouldn’t want $1.2 billion? I bet you could roll around in it real nice.
- Speaking of non-announcements, Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt says he might want to move to a new stadium in Kansas, or move to a new stadium in Missouri, or renovate his current stadium in Missouri, whatcha got? “I certainly don’t expect to have anything finalized by [next spring], but I’d like to know the direction that we’re heading in that time frame,” said Hunt, which isn’t even a fake deadline, come on, man, don’t you know you’re supposed to set a date and then move it later if necessary? Do I have to call you up and read Chapter 4 to you out loud?
- In extremely unsurprising news, NFL owners unanimously approved Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s plan to accept $775 million in public money to pay for stadium upgrades. “The NFL believes in Jacksonville. I believe in Jacksonville, and I know our fans and the people throughout the community believe in Jacksonville,” Khan said after the vote from London, where his team will keep on playing one “home” game a year under the new deal because one can always believe in two places at once.
- As if Chicago doesn’t have enough new stadium demands, Chicago Fire owner Joe Mansueto says he’s looking at building a soccer-specific stadium as well. Mansueto says it would be privately funded, but they all say that, so if he does settle on a location and a plan, it’s worth keeping an eye on the fine print.
- For everyone writing up your “Where will the Tampa Bay Rays play in 2025?” articles, please cross Durham, North Carolina off the list, Bulls management says there’s no room there. Also if you’re wondering what is being done with the Rays stadium roof that was blown off last week, you can buy bits of it on eBay.
- Green Bay Packers management says it wants to sign a 30-year lease extension on Lambeau Field and pay for all stadium upgrades in that time and just wants the city of Green Bay to freeze its rent in exchange. That’s probably not a terrible deal, but it would cost city taxpayers something — $30 million, according to city operations chief Joe Faulds — and the current lease runs through 2032 with a 10-year team extension option, so one can see why the city might not jump at the chance. Anyway, let this be a reminder that even fan-owned sports teams can demand public money, nonprofits got the profit motive too.
- It took 27 years for this Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon to come true, but with cities like Tulsa offering cash payments for remote workers to relocate to their cities, you too can now be Ned Balter.
If they move to Oak Brook, that’s going to be quite a move, as that’s in Illinois. They are taking about Brook Park. :)
Oh, jeez. I need to wait till I’m fully awake before posting these.
That would be an awesome move after da Bears move to Greensboro or whatever is left of Asheville.
Great cartoon, Neil. Where the hell did you dig it up?
I remember reading it when it first was published, and fortunately it popped up again as a “classic” reprint. Tom the Dancing Bug is great.
Its not like Green Bay could rent Lambeau Field to someone else if they don’t make a deal with the Packers.
True, although they could certainly save operating costs by not hosting the Packers… and probably rent it out for other events (that don’t earn what the Packers do… NASCAR at Lambeau? Maybe Monster Supercross too…).
And on the flip side, if Lambeau is were to no longer be an option for the Packers, whither?
Oakland? St. Louis? San Diego? Joliet or Cicero? Maybe Gary (oops, Colts territory surely?)
The two parties need each other. If one needs the other “more”, I’m not sure which it would be.
I thought the Packers owned Lambeau?
Nope, jointly owned by the city and the stadium authority, rented by the Packers.
In order to get the rent freeze, the owners of the Packers should threaten to move to St Louis. Let’s see how committed they are to being owners of an NFL team.
Such shocking news, “our fans and the people throughout the community believe in Jacksonville”. Wow, can it be possible that a Jaguars fan who lives in Jacksonville believes in Jacksonville? Or is Khan trying to say that Jacksonville residents are stupid enough to believe throwing almost a billion dollars at putting lipstick on his stadium will make Jacksonville great again.
Neil, to flesh out your financial skepticism: 1)Cuyahoga County has said “No” to any County dollars; 2) the Browns’ annual event projections for their dome are way overstated and once the State budget people correct those projections they are unlikely to advise Ohio legislators to approve the team’s $600 million State bonding ask; 3) even if the budget people somehow approve bonding, legislators know that whatever they approve for Cleveland would have to be replicated for Cincinnati and–to a lesser extent–for minor league franchises in Columbus, Toledo, Akron, Dayton and Lake County; and 4) the State of Ohio has never issued a stadium subsidy to a team over the objection of local elected officials, a point Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb made in his press conference yesterday.
The Chicago Fire should just bide their time. There’s a chance in a few years, either Soldier Field, or Guaranteed Rate Field become available, or both. They could probably get public funding to remove the hated “space ship” from above the west side of Soldier Field. Then they’d have a pretty sweet 40,000 seat soccer stadium. Guaranteed Rate would be a more difficult conversion, but you’d get 7000 parking spaces and easy road and rail access. Or, they could try to improve on their consistent last place finishes.
Georgia State and the Portland Timbers have successfully renovated baseball parks into football/soccer. I think Comiskey 2 would be an excellent location for a soccer stadium. Like one of the best in MLS.
Fun Fact: when Soldier Field was going through its early 2000s reno and the Fire had to vacate for almost two seasons, the then-Comiskey Park was an option, but the Sox said no. Had they not gone to Naperville (the modular stadium at Arlington Park never got anywhere), they’d have been forced to go dark for a bit or play in Milwaukee.
The Fire already have a soccer specific stadium that they left for Soldier Field.
But like a lot of the MLS stadiums from that era- terrible location.
Perfect example of why developers and teams shouldn’t just put something somewhere just because it’s easier or convenient for them but should instead think it through and build it somewhere that would be the perfect location in five or ten or twenty years.
As a long suffering “Fire dude” the location in Bridgeview is not terrible, although not perfect either, as someone who lives in the city. But SeatGeek stadium makes up for it by being easier to fill up a Fire-sized crowd, and just being a better soccer-only stadium Plus for a lot of people in a lot of the surburbs, Bridgeview is way easier than downtown.
The thing with soccer is that the games aren’t very long and there are a lot of them. The most successful MLS stadiums are usually centrally located cuz people aren’t driving a 1+ hours roundtrip for 2ish hours of entertainment. So even if Bridgeview is convenient for you and people on that side of town- there’s not enough of you to justify cutting off the wealthy north side and further flung suburbs.
Obviously the answer is promotion/relegation, eventually you’d get a top tier team(s) throughout Chicago, but the MLS system is stupid and just allows the teams to abandon perfectly fine stadiums.
Additional comments from Mansueto:
“My personal view is that stadiums are not a great investment,” Mansueto said. “They’re big, costly to maintain, sit empty most of the time. And so to the extent that they create value, most of that accrues to the sports team, not the municipality. So to me, it’s fair that the sports team should own it. Moreover, here in Illinois, in the City of Chicago, our finances are strained. Teachers want more money, law enforcement needs money, pension obligations. Our city and state don’t have the funds, to be candid, and so to me, we would privately finance it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5851885/2024/10/17/chicago-fire-owner-soccer-stadium/
Mansueto makes sense. He’s going to get kicked out of the owner’s club if he keeps talking like that.
Seriously, this is why I was kind of excited to see this: I don’t know that I’ve EVER seen an owner talk this honestly about stadium funding. The Fire don’t NEED a new stadium, but . . . hey if he wants to fund it, I hope he picks the old Michael Reese hospital site. It’s close by.
Who is up for a little Vaportecture?
Here’s another As rendering.
https://www.sfgate.com/athletics/article/vegas-as-stadium-not-good-as-advertised-strip-view-19844576.php
90% of these stadiums’ revenue will come from the booth selling vape cartridges out on the street next to the ticket kiosks, so you might say the vaportecture is essential
I could have used some cannabis sales at last night’s Mets game.
And a little more from the jaguars about their stadium. Vaportecture Friday!
https://www.jaguars.com/news/unanimous-vote-nfl-owners-back-jacksonville-s-stadium-transformation
Even as a Jags fan, I have to say those are pretty bland by vaportecture standards. Nothing that we haven’t seen in the renderings of other venues.
I’d personally love to see more bonkers stadium designs in America, the kind that can only be conjured while on shrooms. Of the existing (pro) stadiums, only the current Soldier Field and the Marlins’ ballpark qualify imo.
Shakedown Browns hitch-hiking to Brooktown
I guess the upside is at least the Browns are good at something?
This is honestly so stupid and short sighted on the Haslams part.
Let’s be real. The Browns suck. They have sucked for a long, long time. Yet their fans still attend the games. I highly doubt that once that expensive albatross of a suburban dome gets to be a few let alone ten years old, fans will continue to pack it like they do their current conveniently located stadium. So that leaves what? Mega concerts and maybe a college bowl game, Superbowl, or Final Four once every like thirty years. Yeah. Totally better than their current situation!
Houston and other huge metros can get away with something like this. LA especially. Small metros like Cleveland can’t. They should have learned from the Detroit metro and the Silverdome.
The Browns literally made the playoffs two of the last four years.
They’ve also never hosted a playoff game in the history of that stadium and are set to be in salary cap hell for the rest of the decade
Brook Park sounds alot like Arden Hills. A total wasteland that only a fool like Governor Dayton would believe is a viable location for NFL stadium. Hopefully Governor DeWine won’t fall for this Browns and Bengals stunt.
How did I forget Richfield?
Or Pontiac.
Pontiac made perfect sense at the time given suburbanization was still in its early go go days but somebody with foresight would’ve realized so much sprawl would inevitably prove very costly to maintain and upgrade over the years.
It’s a shame because the Silverdome was a piece of history and a pretty well built and well designed stadium that ended up an abandoned shell of itself before it was demolished.
Nobody should trust the Haslams to build it right, wherever they build their dome. I mean have you seen those renderings? Yikes.
The suburb along I-71 and I-480 adjacent to the main Cleveland airport? The suburb with a proposed stadium whose site used to have a Ford assembly plant? Such a “total wasteland”.
Locations of NFL stadiums don’t matter. You’re talking about maybe 10 games a year? The fans who want to go will go.
A lot of the league plays far away from downtowns. Foxboro, East Rutherford, Glendale, Arlington, Inglewood, Santa Clara…
“Jaguars ‘Stadium of the Future’”
They need the Chef of the Future to answer the vital question: Can it core a apple?