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Sounds like the Krafts have given up on the idea of a Revolution stadium in Somerville

Johnathan Kraft was on with Felger and Massarotti yesterday and it sure sounds like he was saying good bye, Curtatone, hello Walsh:

Unfortunately, I don’t think this was something Mayor Menino saw the value in, and it didn’t get a lot of attention.

“I think Mayor Walsh believes in the sport and understands the impact it could have on the city beyond just the sport but what you can do with the use of the city and cultural events. Hopefully we’ll see if become a reality in the near future.

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Comments

Where in Boston is there a large chunk of land on the T? Other than where the casino was rejected?

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Giant piece of underutilized land where the Stop & Shop warehouse used to be. There's precedent: The land was once a race-car track. There's public transportation: Readville station is nearby.

The main drawback is the roads around there: They're not designed for several thousand people to show up at once. Also, I can't imagine the people who live near the site would be real thrilled.

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..the extensive Neponset River wetlands.

I noticed when I was working on video stuff there that traffic is hell in the congested little grid of old parkways and such. And that's just a normal day.

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Especially the former Mayor hisself. Would Martin really do that to him?

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Suffolk Downs will probably fold -- casino or not. You could net crowds from Eastie, Revere, and Chelsea pretty easily.

With a little elbow grease and scheduling, you could also capture Lynn, Everett, and Somerville.

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Hadn't thought of that, but that would be a great place for it.

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isn't a casino going there (we hope at least).

Maybe you mean Wonderland.

Edit: Woops.. realized Wonderland is in Revere, not Eastie. Need.More.Coffee.

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That's the best possible place for it. Rail access, road access, and land. That would be a great place for a soccer stadium. And it's close to the target demographic to boot, within 45 minutes public transit from hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Latin America.

The Blue Line would be nuts after a game.

There are just a lot more people (even here) who'd like to watch a soccer game than horse racing.

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Bingo , we have a lucky winner, Suffering Downs .

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...as long as it doesn't go inside of Metro Boston.

The simple fact is Boston doesn't need another outdoor venue space, and it certainly doesn't need one whose nominal usage is somewhere between 25 and 35 times a year. It will be overbuilt for the 300+ days of the year it goes unused and very likely underbuilt for the times that it does see usage, especially since soccer's "arrival" is about to stick a lot of other cities dumb enough to build MLS 1.0 stadiums with a serious case of buyer's remorse.

The Seattle Sounders, one of the few teams still playing in a football stadium, manage to fill that place to capacity or near so on a regular basis. Can you imagine if they'd built a "right-sized" soccer stadium, with maybe a third of the seats?

And with the exploding popularity of soccer teams in other cities, it's going to be a real problem - real soon - for those places that built "right-sized" soccer stadiums. Let's face facts, when all those other guys come calling for handouts to renovate or perhaps to build an MLS 2.0 stadium downtown for those cities who could only manage one in the suburbs, we're going to either look wicked smart for waiting it out or wicked stupid for being one of the bunch now stuck trying to renovate or replace a soccer stadium long before the end of its useful life expectancy.

Focusing on enshrining the venerable Old Fenway Park in its rightful place in history and mothballing the entire thing as the museum relic that it is, replacing it with New Fenway Park somewhere else in the city, would be a far better use of the pent up demand for a "new" outdoor venue. Despite assurances that the old park can survive active use for another 47 years, the fact is the thing is showing its age in a way that can no longer be papered over by renovations; and with it on the Register of Historic Places, the question of exactly how much more it even could be renovated is a serious one with the potential for a very bad answer.

We need an action plan to close Fenway within 15 years and preserve as much of it as an open public space as we possibly can, and we need to replace it with an outdoor venue that will actually be used often enough throughout the year that building it is a reasonable proposition with good return on investment. Soccer stadiums just aren't.

(We can make the argument that building an MLS 2.0 stadium in a city that's hurting for outdoor venue space might make sense, but that city isn't Boston. Fortunately, since it's the "New England" Revolution, I'm sure that building a stadium in Springfield or Manchester or Hartford or Providence or Worcester or Portsmouth would not at all provoke mass disenfranchisement of the team by its fanbase, reasonable people who acknowledge and accept that the team doesn't actually belong to Boston and building in some other New England City wouldn't constitute a "move." Oops, my sarcasm is showing.)

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Are you for real?

We can make the argument that building an MLS 2.0 stadium in a city that's hurting for outdoor venue space might make sense, but that city isn't Boston

Name ONE outdoor venue within Boston City Limits that can currently host MLS that ISNT fenway or a university stadium.

Yeah.. because there are none. Yes we have non-sports venues like the BoA Pavillion (or whatever its called these days), but that place's days are numbered as more of the seaport gets built it, the more that land will look attractive. City Hall Plaza doesn't really count as a venue (because it wasn't built in that manner), nor do any DCR parks (again size reasons)

Yeah so we have one.. Fenway.

We could use another outdoor venue in the city limits. I'd KILL for a place to see a concert during the summer that wasn't inside the garden or at the HoB. The Pavillion is very nice but not setup for super large crowds and concerns (think like Madonna or Cher or some big name)

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I never argued to put MLS in one of the existing venues, although if you must have it in Boston, there's no reason not to put it in one of the University stadia - after all, that's most of their fanbase to begin with.

No, I said, and quote:

The simple fact is Boston doesn't need another outdoor venue space, and it certainly doesn't need one whose nominal usage is somewhere between 25 and 35 times a year.

No qualifier of "to host MLS" there. I also didn't say anothing about not wanting to replace existing venue spaces - indeed, the Pavilion needs to be up-sized, and I went on a long tirade about the need to retire Old Fenway and build New Fenway.

What I said was that Boston has more than enough outdoor venue space - yes, including the Hatch Shell and the rest of the DCR assets, yes, including the universities' collective assets, and yes, all the rest of the non-sports-specific space that you tried to disqualify when you wanted this to be about shoehorning MLS into an existing Boston space and moved the goal to that effect.

I would entertain the idea of building New Fenway with soccer sightlines in mind for a dual-sport venue on the assumption that MLS will be forced to fall in line with FIFA's schedules at some point real soon now and go to a fall-spring format. I would also entertain the idea of replacing the Pavilion with a soccer stadium outright.

Other than that? No, Boston already has enough outdoor venue space and land is at too much of a premium here to build more of it when instead we could be consolidating or upgrading what we have.

Providence could genuinely use an outdoor venue space, as could Hartford, as could Springfield, as could Manchester or Worcester or Concord or Portland or Portsmouth. But... whoops... that would cause riots, right? Even though Boston doesn't actually have a soccer team and the team itself seems quite invested in its identity as the "New England" Revolution, "moving the team" to somewhere else in New England would be a shocking betrayal.

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The Patriots are the "New England Patriots", rather than the "Boston Patirots", yet they're still attached to Boston and I think it would definitely be considered a shocking betrayal to move them.

The Revolution benefit from being within easy access of Boston and the millions of people that live in and around it. Move the team to Springfield or Manchester or somewhere like you proposed and attendance would drop sharply, because not as many people are going to be willing to drive that much farther than Foxboro, and you couldn't easily run MBTA specials to games like you can at Foxboro.

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Worcester. Quite possibly the busiest of all MBTA Commuter Rail Lines and the second largest city in the region. Easy access via the Pike or Route 9.

Providence. If Worcester is #1, Providence is a close #2, and Providence also gets the benefit of Amtrak services, which more than make up the difference in service between Providence Line and Worcester Line. "Easy" access via 95 or US-1; there's always traffic, but that's the price you pay for driving through urban areas.

Springfield. Trains don't run here from Boston yet (except for the second-shittiest Amtrak run on this side of the Mississippi, once each way every day), but that's mostly because this state has a bad problem with screwed up identity politics and 495 might as well be an international boundary for the way that Boston and Springfield treat each other. Still, the tracks are intact and serviceable and Amtrak hasn't been quiet about wanting regular service between Springfield and Boston. Longer-distance Worcester Line or Worcester-Springfield Commuter Rail could expand service as well, as well as those special soccer trains. A bit of a hike, but not unreasonable.

Worcester is ~45 miles, Providence ~55, Springfield is ~90, in case you wanted to know about driving distances.

PS: No, I don't think the Patriots are all that attached to Boston, either. The problem is less relevant for the Patriots not because their claim to this town is any more legitimate but because, in spite of everything, the NFL is still the sport for huge numbers of Americans and will remain so for the forseeable future. Do you honestly expect that the vast majority of football sports watchers would care that strongly about the team moving to Hartford after the first four months or so? I promise you that they wouldn't.

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Of course rail service to those cities from Boston is possible, but the difference is that Foxboro has an existing station ON SITE, whereas Springfield and Worcester would not, unless the stadium happened to somehow be across the street from the existing stations.

Additionally, those are much farther away, and would be more challenging for the T to run extra service to.

And you don't need to school me on distances and travel times, I'm well aware of all of them, trust me.

Finally, even if it's not the majority nationwide, I do think a significant portion of Patriots fans WOULD care about the team moving to Hartford, considering how many of them live in Boston and the surrounding area and like the ease of getting to Foxboro for games, which they wouldn't have in Springfield.

The largest city in New England is Boston, so a team that advertises itself as the "New England Patriots" ought to be easily accessible to the largest population center in New England, i.e. Boston.

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Most of it is useless parking lot, and it's a reasonable walk from Andrew station. Keep the stores (perhaps with some on-site relocation), lose the parking lot, put the stadium there.

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There's no way they'll lose the parking unless they want to lose a lot of the anchors, too. They could probably put the lot under the stadium somewhat easily, though.

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Look at the way they raised hell about the notion of a football stadium being placed there! Who's to say that there won't be resistance down in Southie to having it near Andrew station?

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nor is it Roxbury or Dorchester, really. It's its own little piece of nowhere.

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A decent idea - build South Bay a parking garage! Frankly I'm surprised they didn't do that to begin with. It feels like an outer suburban shopping center thrown into the middle of the city, where it really should be more of a walkable, transit-oriented development that happens to also include parking. Think Legacy Place in Dedham.

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Everyone's always on Adam for his misspellings when he's dashing off a post.
But here we have TWO journalists write a piece that includes "tracks of land".

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Why not build a 30,000 seat stadium on the site of the old Wonderland Dog Track? Close to the T, commuter rail, and plenty of parking.

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Curious by what Kraft means when he says Walsh "understands the impact", it sounds like the small government, low taxes Krafts are asking for corporate welfare for the stadium. Hopefully not, Id love to see a soccer stadium in the city, but not if we have to pay for it.

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Oligarchs work with a two tier system. Socialism for them and neo feudal for the rest.

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Of course the did finance the construction of Gillette Stadium and Patriot Place entirely through private funds.

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But before we confer Mensch-hood on them, let's not forget how they tried to blackmail Massachusetts by threatening to move to Hartford.

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But Elaine was reallly a shiksa , right?

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But they did try to bill the taxpayer for a bridge they wanted built to the stadium (with stimulus money, ironically for republicans). Anyway, should we really give someone an attahboy for paying for their own buildings that they make millions from every year?

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Considering almost every MLB or NFL stadium built since has relied on public funds, maybe we should give them some props.

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