New Basketball Arena Discussion

[Oreos&Milk]

T-Wolves potential owners eying site adjacent to the Farmers Market.

https://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/ ... -lore.html

Honestly with today's Market.. I wonder what a Timber wolves stadium would look like if it was built into the MOA. Like that big overflow parking lot to the east. It be connected to TWO existing Metro lines (red and blue) and a potential 3rd if we count Riverview. Tons of hotels rooms, places for visitors to shop and dine at (during mall hours) and it really is pretty walkable as well.

I think Royalston could be a great place for more housing, even public housing if we can build it well even if it takes 5-15 years it be worth the wait. Instead of rushing to build ANOTHER stadium. Seems like every year we are building a new stadium.. next thing you know it were going to have to invent new sports to keep the stadium building trend in the twin cities going.. pickelball is a sport right? ..Maybe that can be our next stadium after this stadium? hmm

[mattaudio]

How about north of MOA? We can call it the Met Center. Maybe a friendly guy named Norm will buy the team from Glenn Taylor.

[Zkools20]

Why would we want to move an arena out to the burbs. Basketball arenas deserves to be In the urban core. They’re much more active compared to nfl and mlb stadiums. Loosing out on all the concerts and basketball twolves game would be a huge mistake. It’s brings in a bunch of foot traffic to local businesses. Putting it out in the burbs would hurt the downtown recovery

[Bob Stinson's Ghost]

LOL, why would you move a factory to the burbs when there are so many potential workers in the core city?

Seriously, why not move the arena out to a greenfield site in the cornfields? Construction costs would be much lower and it would free up that land in the heart of the city for housing.

[BigIdeasGuy]

Going out to a greenfield location has been tried many times by teams & cities and almost universally those locations and arena's are disliked by teams and fans alike. Teams want to be downtown and DT's want 17000-ish visitors in them 100+ days a year

[Tom H.]

As far as "suburban Greenfield sites" go, that spot ain't that bad. Near two existing LRT stops, adjacent to MoA and South Loop... You could do worse.

[Emerson Uptowner]

Arena's more than anything need to be downtown near the hotels, bars, and restaurants. Downtown's are also usually in the center of a metro area. Why should for instance someone in Andover have to drive to Bloomington to go to an event on a week night. Philadelphia is considering moving from where they are in the south part of the city to center city.

[BikesOnFilm]

Arena's more than anything need to be downtown near the hotels, bars, and restaurants. Downtown's are also usually in the center of a metro area.

Normally I tend to agree with stadiums belonging in downtown areas but you've got a transit connected site absolutely stuffed to the gills with hotels, bars, and restaurants. If you wanted to consider a suburban site that took away none of the benefits the Wolves currently get from downtown, this would be the one.

Philadelphia is considering moving from where they are in the south part of the city to center city.

The Jets and the Giants play adjacent to American Dream Meadowlands in New Jersey, so this isn't entirely without precedent.

[Rich]

The Spurs and Sixers are each planning to move downtown. Pretty sure that’ll leave the Clippers as the last remaining suburban NBA team.

[Zkools20]

The only reason they play at in meadow lands is because their idea of the stadium in manhattan went belly up when nyc didn’t get the Olympics. There is no other piece of land big enough in manhattan for a football stadium unless you tear out a couple blocks. Arenas should always be built in the heart of the city. When all major transit lines converge there it makes the argument of having two lines by the mall a weak argument. Having Minneapolis miss out on all the major events that currently go to target center would be a mistake. Putting a new arena in this area of downtown and redeveloping target center into whatever would be a huge net to downtown and create more development opportunities around the new arena.

[mplsjaromir]

To be fair Inglewood has a greater population density than Minneapolis. Only NYC, SF, Chicago, Philly, Boston, Miami are the only NBA cities with a greater population density than Inglewood. But yeah it is not considered the hub or even a hub of greater LA.

[SurlyLHT]

If it ends up being Downtown, it needs to serve the community somehow. Whether it's part of a larger development meeting needs, or infrastructure needs, or financing a fund to help with affordable housing or something.

[Emerson Uptowner]

If it ends up being Downtown, it needs to serve the community somehow. Whether it's part of a larger development meeting needs, or infrastructure needs, or financing a fund to help with affordable housing or something.

If the arena is privately funded why would this be the case. There are other options for affordable housing whatever affordable housing is.

[SurlyLHT]

My guess is the insider is former CM Goodman.

"How new ownership would go about funding the stadium remains unclear, but without a doubt, Lore and A-Rod would want public funding for this project. The problem with doing that in Minneapolis, according to Shama’s reporting, is the Minneapolis City Council, just as Uber and Lyft, which were nearly forced to vacate the city too.

It’s known the city has limited financial resources to keep up with Target Center improvements and probably limited intent to help with a new arena. Members of the council are viewed by many Minnesotans as having anti-business positions and for taking controversial stances such as their spring ordinance for higher pay for Uber and Lyft drivers that almost ended badly needed service in the city for everyone from bar patrons to people with disabilities needing transportation for medical appointments.

“That city council is kind of crazy,” said the former NBA insider.

A former city insider said council members “don’t get it” as to where money comes from to run the state’s largest municipality. She cited a lack of awareness about how important city sports and entertainment venues are to tax revenues. During and after the pandemic and George Floyd phenomenon, the number of downtown workers and visitors dropped dramatically. A saving grace for city coffers, she said, are the ticket tax revenues generated by patrons at Target Center, Target Field and U.S. Bank Stadium."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/lo ... ngNewsVerp

[minntransplant]

with the property tax increases we will be seeing the next couple years, I doubt even a more moderate city council is going to want to support giving a subsidy to a new stadium anytime soon. It would be received more poorly among the broader electorate than the "lefty" stuff that some of the council has pursued.

[Oreos&Milk]

Arena's more than anything need to be downtown near the hotels, bars, and restaurants. Downtown's are also usually in the center of a metro area.

Normally I tend to agree with stadiums belonging in downtown areas but you've got a transit connected site absolutely stuffed to the gills with hotels, bars, and restaurants. If you wanted to consider a suburban site that took away none of the benefits the Wolves currently get from downtown, this would be the one.

Philadelphia is considering moving from where they are in the south part of the city to center city.

The Jets and the Giants play adjacent to American Dream Meadowlands in New Jersey, so this isn't entirely without precedent.

Exactly!

Plus with the MOA new expansion plans focusing around entertainment I'm sure they would be onboard with the idea as well! Tons of retail, restaurants, and hotels near the MOA. If they want a new stadium then building it into the MOA would save them on parking if they could use some of the MOA's parking. Which I'm sure MOA wouldn't be to hesitant if they knew all those stadium visitors would become customers to their tenants and help in marketing numbers for promotional materials as MOA visitor numbers would only skyrocket.

Also maybe build it on the North end of the MOA that way they would truly have to walk through the mall. Literally build it as a new anchor tenant to the Mall with adjustment retail wing focused on serving the fans.

How fun would that be, going to a game at the MOA and actually having tons of good food options all within walking distance in a safe and comfortable climate controlled area.

I'm okay with it staying where they are now at Target Center, but if they want a new stadium. Farmers Market site shouldn't be allowed to be developed into another parking ramp around a new stadium. I support Target center staying as a concert venue downtown and being an asset for the community, but if the wolves want to pull out then they gotta pull out of the entire city. We built our transit design to serve them, not to serve them moving down the line one station after we finally get through the red tape of building our Metro lines!

[amiller92]

My guess is the insider is former CM Goodman.

"How new ownership would go about funding the stadium remains unclear, but without a doubt, Lore and A-Rod would want public funding for this project. The problem with doing that in Minneapolis, according to Shama’s reporting, is the Minneapolis City Council, just as Uber and Lyft, which were nearly forced to vacate the city too.

It’s known the city has limited financial resources to keep up with Target Center improvements and probably limited intent to help with a new arena. Members of the council are viewed by many Minnesotans as having anti-business positions and for taking controversial stances such as their spring ordinance for higher pay for Uber and Lyft drivers that almost ended badly needed service in the city for everyone from bar patrons to people with disabilities needing transportation for medical appointments.

“That city council is kind of crazy,” said the former NBA insider.

A former city insider said council members “don’t get it” as to where money comes from to run the state’s largest municipality. She cited a lack of awareness about how important city sports and entertainment venues are to tax revenues. During and after the pandemic and George Floyd phenomenon, the number of downtown workers and visitors dropped dramatically. A saving grace for city coffers, she said, are the ticket tax revenues generated by patrons at Target Center, Target Field and U.S. Bank Stadium."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/lo ... ngNewsVerp

Goodman is very much not a fan of stadium subsidies.

[BikesOnFilm]

I still think getting the water park built on the north end of the mall is the smarter play, but now that Riverview isn't going to build a new elevated Blue Line station at the mall, that might be an acceptable public subsidy that would open up developing the East Lot into a stadium.

Also, the City of Minneapolis owns the Target Center and it's not like a new stadium at MOA would take that away. It'll still be available for concerts and smaller sporting events. Hell, would a new basketball stadium immediately mean the Lynx would move there, or would they want to be able to claim a stadium all to themselves?

And if Bloomington wants to roll out the financial red carpet for this, they're more than welcome to as far as I'm concerned. Anyone worried about lost game day revenue can focus more on bringing more residents downtown to capture that same amount of money through daily coffee trips and food delivery.

[HKM]

Some things to consider:

1) The Lynx and Timberwolves are currently one entity, until that changes it is highly unlikely they play in different venues.

2) What events are coming to the current Minneapolis arena or St. Paul arena in the event that a brand new NBA arena opens in Bloomington? The Minneapolis arena would be totally obsolete and likely need to be demolished while the St. Paul arena is going to lose the vast majority of their non-hockey events if a new NBA arena is built anywhere in the metro.

[BikesOnFilm]

There are concerts happening at Target Center, Xcel Energy Center, and US Bank Stadium, despite the acoustics being atrocious at the latter. The even worse Roy Wilkins Auditorium also still gets events from time to time, and that's certainly a venue we could demolish safely at this point.

If the consideration for where to host an event was simply "the newest venue gets every event," we would have stumbled into this problem years ago. A new NBA stadium will not become the city's only event center if built.