Planned Soccer Stadium in Downtown Tampa

[kmthurman]

VERY interesting tweet today from Bob O'Malley, Florida Regional VP for CSX:

Looking forward to taking the @Tampastreetcar to the first @rowdiessoccer vs. @VSITampaFlames friendly in the new stadium!

Which implies they are very much zereod in on Channelised since CSX would likely have an idea since they own ROW/tracks right near much of the land were talking about.

[Jasonhouse]

CSX is the great Satan.

[USF802]

Originally Posted by jonknee

Length of season doesn't matter, the NFL season is also long but they only play 8 guaranteed games at home (compared to 81 for baseball!). It appears MLS teams play 17 home games a season, which is better than the NFL but not a whole lot over a year to take up such a large amount of space in the CBD. It would literally sit empty 95% of the year.

Despite playing a relatively small home schedule in comparison to baseball a SSS venue in a downtown setting such as the one proposed offers much more alternatives to other entertainment options than a baseball stadium. For instance empty voids in the schedule could be filled with international friendlies, both US men and woman soccer games, USF/UT soccer matches, lacrosse, concerts and many many more events. There is no chance they would invest that kind of money to have it sit like that 3/4 of the year.

[Jasonhouse]

I'm sure they'll pay property taxes too.

lol


But seriously, I think that something like this is better suited out around the fairgrounds. Definitely not in the CBD in my opinion. Even over in west Tampa somewhere would be better than down in the Channel District.

[Szemeredy]

Originally Posted by USF802

Despite playing a relatively small home schedule in comparison to baseball a SSS venue in a downtown setting such as the one proposed offers much more alternatives to other entertainment options than a baseball stadium. For instance empty voids in the schedule could be filled with international friendlies, both US men and woman soccer games, USF/UT soccer matches, lacrosse, concerts and many many more events. There is no chance they would invest that kind of money to have it sit like that 3/4 of the year.

USF already has Corbett Stadium. I could see the men's soccer team playing a few exhibition games downtown, but not an entire season.

Edit: From a logistics standpoint, It's difficult enough to get students down to Ray Jay for football games. Either Bull Runner has to use every available transit bus it has to move about 1000 students, or apathy keeps everyone home due to lack of convenience (we're sending two 40ft buses to the Pitt game this weekend, 140 students at best).

[USF802]

Originally Posted by Szemeredy

USF already has Corbett Stadium. I could see the men's soccer team playing a few exhibition games downtown, but not an entire season.

I wasn't referring to the whole season, I was referring to maybe 1 or 2 early season exhibition games, same goes for UT. It would be kind of what USF and UT hockey do by playing games at the Forum, may be a bad comparison since neither campus has a hockey rink, but I was thinking more of the general idea of it. It provides some nice utilization of an otherwise empty venue. Again not referring to the season as a whole, just one or two games.

[TampaMike]

When I was looking at other MLS stadiums, it surprised me how far some stadiums were from the main cities, like Kansas City's and Dallas' teams. It would be like placing a stadium in Pasco or even Hernando County.

At the same time, I can see many uses coming from a soccer stadium. I've stated some, but there's a dozen more. Would be cool to do one Lightning game outside the forum in the stadium if could.

[jonknee]

Originally Posted by TampaMike

At the same time, I can see many uses coming from a soccer stadium. I've stated some, but there's a dozen more. Would be cool to do one Lightning game outside the forum in the stadium if could.

Ah yes, have the Lightning play outside while the Rays play inside. Common sense.

[TampaMike]

Originally Posted by jonknee

Ah yes, have the Lightning play outside while the Rays play inside. Common sense.

Its been done before. Be it, they were in the northern part of the country.

Fine, a Storms game.

[USF802]

Well I guess if we are throwing out hypothetical scenarios, I will throw rugby and the Tampa Krewe into the mix.

[TPAMAN]

Let's not forget the Lingerie Football League

[USF802]

^ I thought they moved to Jacksonville?

[tampasteve]

Originally Posted by USF802

^ I thought they moved to Jacksonville?

haha, yes I believe they did.

[TPAMAN]

Originally Posted by USF802

^ I thought they moved to Jacksonville?

Would be a good reason to lure them back then!

[kmthurman]

Originally Posted by Jasonhouse

But seriously, I think that something like this is better suited out around the fairgrounds. Definitely not in the CBD in my opinion. Even over in west Tampa somewhere would be better than down in the Channel District.

Why? CBD I understand, but Channelside? Downtown and near downtown SSS have been incredibly successful since they switched from building them way out in the suburbs. Portland plays in the heart of downtown and it is a huge boost to it since they moved the minor league baseball out of it.

DC is going to build theirs just south of Downtown, but in DC proper and an area more developed than Channelside. Houston just built their stadium an an underutilized parcel in downtown. Livestrong in KC is about the distance your talking about, but soccer and youth go together in the US and think downtown is a great location in Tampa.



Portland



Houston

[USF802]

I was reading through some of the comments on one of the soccer blogs talking about this story and one person commented that "his source" says that this is a done deal and construction should start within 6 months. Obviously it should be taken as the smallest grain of salt, but interesting nonetheless.

Originally Posted by kmthurman

Why? CBD I understand, but Channelside? Downtown and near downtown SSS have been incredibly successful since they switched from building them way out in the suburbs. Portland plays in the heart of downtown and it is a huge boost to it since they moved the minor league baseball out of it.

DC is going to build theirs just south of Downtown, but in DC proper and an area more developed than Channelside. Houston just built their stadium an an underutilized parcel in downtown. Livestrong in KC is about the distance your talking about, but soccer and youth go together in the US and think downtown is a great location in Tampa.

I agree, soccer and MLS specifically have a very unique set of demographics in comparison to the other major sport franchises. The fans are primarily in the range of 18 to low to mid 30's and tend to be fairly educated among other things. Soccer is usually referred to being trendy or a hip sport and all of that goes hand in hand with being in a downtown versus the suburbs. I think the fairgrounds IMO is to far out there for a SSS, though this group was originally looking in that area at first if I recall. The only places I see a SSS working is in or around downtown or in the area near RJS.

The only thing I worry about with building this SSS downtown on such prime land, is if the old saying "build it and they will come" fails and Tampa fails to attract an MLS team. Then we are stuck with this massive stadium (depending on the building style, if it's a staggered build or not) for a low level soccer team that could be played elsewhere around town.

[Jasonhouse]

I can think of lots of better uses for this quantity of land in the location they want to put the stadium in.

[kmthurman]

I can think of a million better uses, but with hundreds of millions of investment that will draw hundreds of millions more of mixed use development. Waiting for someone to build things there if they actually are ready to build now is ridiculous. Tampa needs momentum to get things built here and a project like this would have a ton of momentum. While I understand what your saying -- but the kind of concerts events and use of the SSS's across the country is similar to the almost completely completely booked up forum.

Also I think you think a soccer stadium is MUCH bigger than it is. Unlike a baseball stadium it would only take a couple of blocks. And create awesome opportunities for 10 to 30 story building over looking the water and the stadium.

As for "if they come" I think it comes down to the experience. Lighting sell out because it's great fun, This team needs to do that, not what the Bucs do.

[smiley]

Soccer stadium in Tampa? Don’t hold your breath

Steve Davis

Nov 30, 2012, 9:48 AM EST
CARSON, Calif. – I tried hard last night to find a person remotely connected with MLS who would add even a spoonful of credible weight to the Tampa stadium story that we told you about yesterday.

I had expressed skepticism that it would happen, and even more that a Major League Soccer franchise would ever develop out of it.

Turns out, I wasn’t skeptical enough.

U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati had not even heard of the project.

MLS vice president for communications Dan Courtemanche said commissioner Don Garber heard about it the same time as the rest of us – when news stories began appearing.

That doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t serious players with serious money to spend. It just means they aren’t moving in the right kind of circles here, and that doesn’t portent well for their chances of completing the MLS circle here.

Best guess: this $400 million, 28,000-seat project goes the way of similar stadium proposals that come and go periodically: they hit the water with a substantial news splash, but then just drift harmlessly out to sea, never to be heard from again.

http://prosoccertalk.nbcsports.com/2...d-your-breath/

[USF802]

[IMG]image hosted on flickr

SSS Tampa by Gonzo1033, on Flickr

Example of what kind of footprint this would have using PPL Park in Philly, much smaller than that of a baseball stadium. It fits on that slot of land almost perfectly.

As for the article, everything at this point is pure speculation, heck it doesn't even sound like our city officials have heard of this let alone anyone at MLS. December 11th we should find out much more.