Quote:
Originally Posted by shutout
The other aspect to it is that the University owns the land the stadium is on and is looking to expand academic building space in the next ten years. I would think that they would love to be able to use the McMahon stadium space for new school buildings.
I do not think that there is a rational, non emotional person that has experienced McMahon and any other stadium that is NFL or NCAA that would not agree that there needs to be a new stadium built.
The questions are: Who are the tenants going to be? How often is it going to be used? What is the cost going to be? Where is it going to be located? And how much public money is going to be required?
There will always be some public money.
Just a matter of how much, and for what.
CFL, MLS, track and field, national soccer, outdoor concerts every month.
If the citizens of the city get nothing more than a place to go and watch sports and some economic return from visitors than I dont think we should be covering more than 25% of the cost. I would go up to 50%, if 30% of the cost was based on bonds that were to be repaid over 20-30 years based on a percentage of revenues.
I think that something like this is what the agreement is in Seattle.
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I'm not sure if you're calling me irrational and emotional or not, but I'll put my hand up as someone who has experienced plenty of both NCAA and NFL stadiums and doesn't think Mcmahon needs replacement. It does need improvements, but full replacement implies that there are fundamental issues that need to be addressed, and that's simply not true. The fact that dozens of comparable stadiums are in use across North America, and are being renovated rather than replaced, is all the evidence I need to show that thinking replacement is not needed is a fully rational position. If the university wants the land for another use that's a completely different issue.
The other uses you list are either pipe dreams (MLS, which would also ideally have a soccer specific stadium anyways), events which do not require any sort of stadium infrastructure (track and field, not to mention that the inclusion of a track would make a stadium loathed by pretty much everyone) or events that may occur once a year at most (national soccer games in Canada are infrequent, and Calgary would be competing with numerous other cities to host. Outdoor concerts every month is an idea that may be applicable to San Diego, but this is Calgary so I'm going to say that's not realistic).
Expanded concourses, additional amenities (bathrooms, concessions etc.), updated a/v, updated/additional boxes and perhaps some cosmetic work would keep McMahon right in line with other comparable stadiums, both in the CFL and elsewhere.