New Basketball Arena Discussion

[Emerson Uptowner]

The examples people have provided of other teams/stadiums that move to the burbs have been NFL and MLB teams, which have more rural fan bases generally speaking.

I have a hard time believing that the first NBA example of this would be in the Twin Cities.

But I’m sure it helps the team owners to have Minneapolis boosters falling over themselves to make sure this won’t happen.

Have any of the NBA teams started the planning process for a new arena post-2020? I could see the combination of downtowns' decreased activity levels and general cachet, plus the arms race of teams chasing profitable rich/corporate guests with hyper-luxury experiences (as the wealth gap grows faster and faster...), incentivizing a shift towards wealthy suburbs (analogous to the suburban stadiums of the white flight era). But then again, maybe enough of the C-Suite is back downtown that it is still the most convenient location for those types.

Philadelphia is going to build a new arena in the same location as the old arena. The Phillies, Eagles, 76ers, and Flyers all play in the same area. South of downtown but still in the city. They were going to build downtown but the plans fell through. I am not sure why. They wanted the arena downtown to off course bring people. They have a great transit system. I don't think their downtown will hurt as they were not downtown to begin with. Even with all the history and tourism Center City can still be a ghost town at times. All downtown's are struggling.

[BikesOnFilm]

Philadelphia is going to build a new arena in the same location as the old arena. The Phillies, Eagles, 76ers, and Flyers all play in the same area. South of downtown but still in the city. They were going to build downtown but the plans fell through. I am not sure why.

IIRC this fell through because they wanted to build the arena adjacent to or on top of Chinatown and the local residents were rightfully angry about what that would ultimately mean for the long term health of that neighborhood.

I could see the combination of downtowns' decreased activity levels and general cachet, plus the arms race of teams chasing profitable rich/corporate guests with hyper-luxury experiences (as the wealth gap grows faster and faster...), incentivizing a shift towards wealthy suburbs

While I know that catering to the ultra rich is a reason for a lot of the stadium shuffling, they wouldn’t need a stadium at all if this was exclusively a product for the ultra rich, mainly because there aren’t 20,000 billionaire basketball fans in Minnesota to reliably fill a brand new stadium.

So the question becomes do they have more luck selling expensive parking in the suburbs to the less wealthy urbanites who are now forced to drive to the game (because they will charge for it no matter where this gets built), or selling valet parking to the rich people while benefiting from transit and proximity to fill the rest of the bowl?

[MinneapBliss]

K-Mart site is just shy of 10 acres. Would be served by the Orange Line and future Midtown LRT Only half joking, I guess. Let downtown's many other features continue to drive development/repurposing, and bring a major investment to an area that's been hit hard in recent years.

[DTSB]

From what I’ve read, Lore & A-Rod want room for the arena plus a hotel and bar/restaurants. Isn’t there lots of room to develop by Allianz field?

[daveybabymsp]

Someone had better commission a wolf statue

[twincitizen]

Just to spark conversation and broaden the list of potential sites beyond 501 Royalston and HERC, I'll throw a few more ideas into the grinder. I hope people at the City and the Downtown Council are also casting a wide net to make sure no possibilities are missed. Keeping the arena downtown is too important to not consider every possible option, even if you have to get creative.

1. Metro Transit Heywood Garage. While the original plan was that the new North Loop Bus Garage was to supplement the existing garage, maybe that has changed due to the dramatic reduction in peak hour express service? We would need some insider info from Metro Transit to know if it is even remotely viable to consider taking the old garage out of service. It could be true that the old garage provides some heavy maintenance functions that the new garage doesn't. And then of course there's the relatively new police station and the Heywood office building that would also need to move. Arena or not, it's fair to say eventually there will be strong interest in redeveloping the 12+ acre old Heywood garage site given its proximity to the region's LRT nexus and North Loop running out of room to grow. Between Old Heywood, the vacant lots lining 5th Street, and decommissioning HERC, there's enough land to build more than just an arena over here.

2. Strib's North Loop printing plant. Yes, it would be expensive to move all the specialized printing equipment to another light industrial building somewhere else in the city, but not that expensive relative to an arena development that will likely cost $1B. According to a Strib employee giving a tour during Doors Open last year, the plant is operating at like 25% capacity. The paper just doesn't need this massive facility anymore. BLRT extension will have a train station a block away on Washington. Parking would be an issue without any large ramps nearby and it would be unpopular to propose any. Likely to be redeveloped one way or another someday. Probably not the best location for an arena.

3. What about tearing down half of the convention center and replacing with an attached arena that could also flex as convention floor space? The City owns and operates the convention center. Is it still necessary to have this large of one? From a pure location standpoint, this is easily one of the best spots the city can offer. It checks a lot of boxes: skyway connected, parking ramp connected, has semi-truck access, would help boost the south end of Nicollet, doesn't take any property off the tax rolls, doesn't require any streets to be closed, etc.

What about closing off a street?
In the downtown core, what are some blocks that could be closed off to create a two-block site? We have a pretty intact street grid downtown without very many superblocks aside from the Convention Center and US Bank Stadium. I don't think it's accurate to say that we couldn't possibly close off any street anywhere downtown, because there's still a lot of resiliency in the downtown grid. Obviously major thoroughfares are off limits.

I'm looking at the two county-owned blocks between the Armory and US Bank Stadium, closing Park Ave between 5th and 6th. Or combining the Leamington Ramp and adjacent vacant block, requiring a closure of 10th St between 2nd and 3rd Ave S. I don't think either of those ideas are completely infeasible to the point where it doesn't warrant discussion.

[BikesOnFilm]

While I really like the idea of something taking up the whole block near 10th St., I think that serves as one of the main streets that feeds downtown traffic onto south 35W and I don't think you'd find a lot of support for closing it.

I would really like to see the Star Tribune plant repurposed but it's going to be housing. I just don't see them getting the whole stadium district neighborhood the owners want out of that site alone. And that's before the parking considerations.

Is there a reason we're leaving big empty lots as open fields near Van White Memorial Park? I assume they were for future phases of affordable housing of some kind, but everything over there so far is arranged like it's Maple Grove. Could be neat to use the two empty lots east of the park for a new stadium, and assemble a bunch of the underused industrial to the south for the entertainment plans.

[DanPatchToget]

Not that they'd ever go for this, but it would be great if they just plopped a new stadium on top of the freeway trench on the southern edge of downtown. Tons of room for a stadium and parking where 35W and 94 are together between Portland Avenue and 11th Avenue.

Besides the engineering complexities, I can't imagine the neighborhoods next to this site would be on board with the idea though.

[BBMplsMN]

Tear down block e and combine it with the Target Center site. Would have to figure out if First Ave ends, goes under or goes through the site, but that’s all part of the engineering fun.

[twincitizen]

@AROD: Help us shape the future of the @Timberwolves & @minnesotalynx by taking this fan feedback survey. https://x.com/AROD/status/1953554098584006886

Link to survey: https://nrg.decipherinc.com/survey/self ... assword=10#?

[COLSLAW5]

1. Metro Transit would not give up the Heywood garage. They are just wrapping up a full gut and remodel of the main office tower and the PD building was just completed in 2018. The garage usage is at its capacity as more electric buses take up more space and storing buses outside is a last resort. Opening the North Loop Garage allowed them to finally store all the in service busses inside. Also with all the new requirements from the new sales tax money there is a huge increase in the need for support maintenance space. Also fun fact Metro Transit Runs the Maple Grove Buses out of that garage.

My bid is for removing the Hawthrone and A ramp and covering or removing the 394 off ramps. This is my map showing the space that could be developed. Biggest issue is Xcel isn't going anywhere and the City sites would be hard to remove.

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9803646 ... FQAw%3D%3D

[COLSLAW5]

wrong link sorry

here is the right one

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid= ... sp=sharing

[billhelm]

Strib just announced they're closing the Heritage printing plant.

https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-s ... /601470310

[Nick]

Wow!

[BikesOnFilm]

That's got to be one of the last users of that rail spur too, right?

[Tyler]

Cool spot for an arena but my gut reaction is i don't like it since you cant leverage very much existing parking. Feel free to tell me why Im wrong.

[twincitizen]

That's probably right. Ignoring parking and traffic issues, the printing plant site would be a solid location for the arena and some ancillary development like a hotel and restaurants, etc. But realistically they'd have to build multiple huge parking ramps north of Plymouth Ave to make it work. Even with the Blue Line extension putting a station one block away, we can't kid ourselves about the large share of event attendees that are going to drive no matter how many multimodal options are available. That goes double in the winter when most of the NBA season takes place. While I want to believe it could work if people parked in existing ramps in the downtown core, maybe spent some money at a restaurant, then got on the train to the new arena site, the vast majority of attendees are going straight to the game and straight home.

The interesting thing is that the farmers market adjacent site has similar transportation & parking problems. It's also one stop away from Target Field Station and only served by one LRT line not both. The Farmers Market site's one big advantage here is that it's probably feasible to build a 1/4-mile long skyway from Ramp A. That skyway would have to be supersized though to handle the throughput of pre- and post-game crowds, since a huge percentage of attendees would be using it whether parking in Ramp A or passing through Ramp A from nearby skyway-connected hotels, bars, etc. I haven't been very high on the farmers market site due to these challenges, personally hoping the HERC site could win out, but I had not previously considered how relatively easy it would be to extend a skyway over there from Ramp A. Not only is it not that far, there's not really anything in the way.

[amiller92]

Call me crazy, but I strongly suspect that mode share for travel to games is highly dependent on parking availability... Or, let them park somewhere else along the train line.

[Anondson]

I didn’t predict a new arena proposed right on top of an existing light rail station.

And on top of a lot of old existing buildings too.

https://www.startribune.com/timberwolve ... /601475588

[Nick]

But they just repainted Sneaky Pete's!