Quote:
Originally Posted by OnTheWarpath58
So residential, or entertainment district?
Bottom line, you ****ed up using Wrigley as an example. Wrigley is an example of what KC should do with the K - develop/build entertainment around it.
Hell, STL isn't even that good of an example. There's one bar right next door, and that's it. Shannon's is several blocks away. Busch is basically surrounded by parking garages.
So what are they doing?
Developing and building an entertainment district behind the left field stands on Clark Street.
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Wrigley is not a bad example. The stadium is, and was, in an urban area. I'm not married to the idea of the stadium being "downtown" so much as I am having it where people actually work and/or live. In fact, I was a proponent of it being built up against Union Station in midtown.
You can't build/develop an entertainment district at Blue Ridge Cutoff and Raytown road because nobody lives there, and nobody works there. The Power and Light district works because it's within walking distance of where tens of thousands of people work every day.
It worked at Wrigley because thousands of people live right there.
If you build an entertainment district near Kaufman, people will go there when there are games, but nobody is driving to Raytown if they aren't going to a game. That's why there is nothing there now. It's not like nobody has ever had the idea of putting a bar/restaurant near the stadium. It simply doesn't make any economic sense.
The city could have used a little foresight and built a new stadium within walking distance or a short cab ride of the Sprint Center, P&L, Downtown, Midtown, Westport, the Plaza, etc. Instead, we publicly financed a nine figure "facelift", and for what? A marginally better stadium in the middle of nowhere.