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An Assessment of the Microarea Impacts of Sports Stadia |
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Timothy S. Chapin
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Central cities have seized upon sports facilities as a means to revitalize specific districts within their downtowns. Despite claims of substantial economic benefits, mounting evidence suggests that sports stadia have only marginal positive impacts upon the metropolitan economy. Those very few studies that have attempted to assess the microarea impacts of sports facilities have so far generated mixed results. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by refocusing the analysis to the microarea level. Using a comparative case study approach, this paper assesses the microarea impacts of recently opened sports stadia in three cities: Baltimore, Cleveland, and Arlington (TX).
For decades American cities have subscribed to a "bricks and mortar" strategy of urban revitalization, one that equates economic development with new construction and generated activity in different districts of the city. This strategy is easily seen in the litany of projects most American cities have constructed in the past thirty years; office/hotel complexes, aquariums, festival marketplaces, downtown shopping malls, convention centers, and, the focus of this paper, sports facilities. Facilities like stadia and aquariums, what Robertson (1995) terms "special activity generators" (SAG’s), bring people to a specific district of the city, focusing activity, and more importantly, dollars into that district and hopefully generating a wealth of benefits that justify the initial investment. Using this strategy, cities attempt to leverage private sector investment in a given district by making a significant up-front investment using public sources of funding.
What types of benefits are expected to result from these facilities? During the planning and development stages of these projects, proponents noisily argue that SAG’s generate employment opportunities, produce tax revenues, and provide significant image benefits to the cities that invest in them. Governments justify their expenditures upon claims of economic development at both the metropolitan and city levels. Professional economic impact studies usually place the economic benefit for a city or metropolitan region at millions of dollars per year, creating thousands of jobs and generating substantial tax revenues, with the clear indication being that the total benefits of the facility far outstrip its construction costs.
In addition to benefits at these larger geographic levels, there is also the question of benefits to the district that is now the home of the new facility. This district level has traditionally received far less attention from researchers than the city or metropolitan level. In his 1995 piece Robertson identified the three primary objectives of public investment into SAG’s at the district level:
1. Spillover spending benefits for the surrounding district: Visitors spend money at nearby hotels, restaurants, and other commercial establishments and also enliven the district to make it more exciting and attractive for visits on non-event days.
2. The generation of new construction in the district: A SAG is usually expected to generate new construction in conjunction with the new facility (for example, a new hotel located on site). Further, the facility is expected to help make the district more attractive for further development, resulting in subsequent rounds of construction as the district matures as an entertainment center.
3. The facility’s location can be used to rejuvenate a blighted area. Related to the above two objectives, often the primary objective of public investment in many SAG’s is to revitalize a blighted district by bringing visitors (and dollars) to the district, leveraging further investment in the district, and remaking the character of the neighborhood, often turning a run-down industrial or warehouse district into a thriving entertainment center with shops, restaurants, and a sense of vitality.
As noted above, a number of projects have captured the imaginations of downtown revitalization proponents over the past several decades. The 1960s and 1970s saw cities constructing huge, office/hotel complexes meant to anchor new development. Downtown convention centers became popular redevelopment tools during this same period. In the later 1970s and 1980s, festival marketplaces like Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston and Harborplace in Baltimore became the project of choice in many cities.
In the past decade, however, the most popular downtown redevelopment project is clearly the sports stadium. Certainly, central cities throughout the United States have previously seized upon sports facilities as a means to revitalize specific districts within their downtowns. In the 1960s, many cities invested in huge, multi-purpose stadia to attract investment to specific districts in their central cities (St. Louis and Pittsburgh for example). In the 1970s and early 1980s, domed stadia became the ticket to sports facility fame and downtown revitalization (Seattle’s Kingdome and Minneapolis’ Metrodome). Since 1985, though, sports stadia have moved past festival marketplaces and convention centers to the become the major focus of downtown development strategies in hundreds of American cities, large and small. Upwards of forty new facilities have been constructed since 1985 for major league sports teams (1) with approximately another twenty in the pipeline for opening prior to 2005. The vast majority of these are in downtown areas, many in formerly blighted districts or old industrial areas that are in need of an economic boost of some kind.
Not to be outdone, suburban cities have also invested millions in sports facilities to illustrate their "coming of age" and to focus development into designated districts of their jurisdictions. Leading the way in the 1970s, facilities in suburban Detroit and Minneapolis illustrated to growing suburban areas that they could host major league sports and gain national recognition and prestige as "major league places". While the trend in recent years has been for teams to return back downtown, suburban areas are still very active players in the sports facility game, in part because of the perceived image benefits, but also because they believe that sports facilities can anchor a district in the same ways as described above for downtown districts.
Using a comparative case study approach, this paper identifies and assesses the district level (or microarea) impacts of recently opened sports stadia in three cities: Baltimore, Cleveland, and Arlington (TX). The study centers on identifying changes related to the objectives of SAG’s: 1) Spillover benefits, 2) New construction, and 3) District revitalization. Parcel-level data was collected for the district surrounding these stadium projects. Demographic and economic data and interviews with local stakeholders augment this parcel level dataset to provide a more complete assessment of impacts at the microarea level. In addition, aerial photographs, local planning documents, and other government documents were consulted to determine changes to these areas and to determine the linkage of local development strategies to these new sports facilities.
The paper begins by very briefly reviewing the gap in the literature that this study begins to fill, before moving on to a discussion of the methodology and the choice of the case cities. Following that, I turn to the results of these case studies with an eye towards identifying the likely benefits and costs of these facilities for their host districts. Finally, I conclude by drawing out implications for city planners and development agencies that choose to use sports stadia (and other SAG’s) as a principal means of revitalizing portions of their city.
North America remains in the midst of a sports facility building boom of immense proportions, with hundreds of millions being spent on retro-ballparks, huge football stadia, and high-tech arenas, often without public consent. For example, USA Today estimated in 1996 that the 1990s will see over $9 billion spent directly on sports stadia for major league sports, a total greater than the budget of the Internal Revenue Service in that same year. Korman (1995) reported that in 1994 alone, over $1.4 billion was spent on construction contracts for sports facilities. (2) My estimates place the total spending for this building boom, between the years 1985-2005, at well over $12 billion, with this figure being a conservative estimate given the nature of these facilities to balloon in cost once construction actually begins. (Chapin 1998) In addition, when one considers the costs of new minor league facilities, new college and university stadia, and the costs for facilities for other sports, the total expenditures on all sports facilities during this building boom could well approach $20 billion when the last of the concrete is poured and the last seat is installed.
Recall also, that the above figure represents only the construction costs of these projects. The $12 billion figure for major sports facilities does not include indirect expenditures that always accompany these massive projects. Improvements to local road networks, other infrastructure improvements, environmental clean-up and business relocation expenses also add to the total spending on these projects. Prince Georges County spent $71 million on infrastructure improvements surrounding the new Jack Kent Cooke Stadium. Charlotte invested $60 million in improvements for their new football stadium that opened in 1995. Using a conservative figure of $30 million for each project, I have estimated that thirty-five projects that had finished construction by summer 1997 had cost an additional $1.05 billion in ancillary costs.
Given these huge expenses it is reasonable to assume that think-tanks and individual researchers would be interested in estimating the benefits associated with these colossal investments. In recent years a huge outpouring of research has centered on the economic benefits related to sports stadia, with most studies aimed at arresting the flood of public dollars flowing into these projects. As a means of organizing these studies they are grouped by how they have assessed the benefits of sports facilities.
Sports Stadia as Profitable Facilities
In the 1960s and 1970s it was regularly argued by sports facility proponents that a new stadium or arena would, on its own, be a profitable venture for a city. For example, New Orleans built the Superdome in part because they thought that rents from football and baseball teams, as well as from conventions and other events could cover the construction costs. Other cities built facilities on this belief as well. A comprehensive study by Baim (1994) found this belief to be false, with almost all studied facilities shown to be monetary losers. Baim came to this conclusion even given that he studied stadia built when teams paid sizable rental fees for their facilities and when stadium construction costs were much smaller (even given inflation) because they did not include expensive extras like luxury suites, huge scoreboards, club seating, and other revenue generating items.
Extrapolating to the current time period, a stadium still cannot be profitable given the rents paid by NFL and MLB teams. While the revenues generated by stadia are much higher now, (3) almost all of these revenues go to the teams themselves via the "suite deals" negotiated with the cities and states that own the stadia. (Danielson 1997; Rosentraub 1997; Ozanian 1995) Further, the huge construction costs of new facilities make the possibility of recovering enough money to cover the annual principal and interest payments on a stadium even less likely. Perhaps the best indication that sports stadia are very rarely profitable ventures is the dearth of privately financed new stadia in the last thirty five years.
In contrast to stadia, sports arenas (4) can be profitable ventures, best evidenced by their construction by private groups. Sports arenas can more easily have two teams share a facility thereby increasing the income from sports events. These facilities can also host a wide variety of events, including concerts and plays, convention-related events, and other events that would not play well in a stadium of 70,000. As would be expected, these facilities also generally cost less than sports stadia, although their costs are also leaping upwards as high-tech scoreboards and sound systems, luxury boxes, and other amenities are added to their design.
Sports Facilities as Economic Development Tools
By far the most research into sports facilities has focused upon the question of the impact of stadia and arenas on the local economy. These studies have generally attempted to measure the number of jobs and amount of tax revenues that have been generated by a new facility. In addition, these studies have attempted to quantify these benefits at the city level or the metropolitan level, in large part because of data limitations and ease of measurement at these geographic levels.
Almost to the last, these studies have found that sports facilities are not the economic development engines that they claim to be. (Rosentraub 1997; Baade 1995; Baade and Sanderson 1997; Baade and Dye, 1990; Noll and Zimbalist 1997; Euchner 1993; Johnson, 1995; Austrian and Rosentraub 1997; Baade and Dye 1988; Rosentraub et al 1994; Baade 1996) Research has concluded that sports are "small potatoes" in the regional economy, equivalent to a large department store like K-mart. Other research has found that the number of jobs generated by these facilities is much smaller than proponents had suggested and that the quality of this employment is seasonal and poorly paid. These studies are quick to point out that stadia rarely create "new money", that is, bring new money into the local economy. Instead money previously spent at the other recreational establishments like movie theaters is now spent at the stadium resulting in the redistribution of money into different pie slices rather than an increase of the total size of the economic pie. Comparisons of cities that have invested in sports facilities indicate that this development strategy is no better than any other strategy, and in some cases somewhat worse. (5) In sum, then, the wealth of literature on the economic impacts of sports facilities at the city or regional level have indicated that stadia and arenas are not the economic engines that they purport to be.
The Image-Related Benefits of Sports Facilities
Much of the above research has implications for this long held belief concerning sports stadia. Proponents argue that these facilities confer substantial image-related benefits to their host cities that eventually translate into economic benefits. They suggest that a stadium or arena makes a city more attractive to footloose businesses. They further suggest that tourists and conventioneers are more likely to visit a city with sports facilities. In the long run, these benefits are translated into new jobs and new development for the city. (Chema 1996)
The beauty of this claim is that it is almost impossible to measure these most-intangible of intangible benefits. Mark Rosentraub, one of the staunchest critics of public investment into sports facilities, concedes that there are likely image-related benefits of hosting major professional sports teams, but he also suggests that these benefits are spurious. (1996) Further, his studies of Indianapolis (Rosentraub et al 1994) suggest that that city’s sports development strategy has had, at best, mixed results for Indianapolis’ long term economic health. Despite protestations to the contrary, stadium proponents have not offered any evidence that sports facilities offer intangible benefits that can be translated into economic growth. As best summed by Danielson (1997) then, there is "little evidence that the presence of professional sports is a determining factor" in the relocation of footloose firms to an area. (6)
Stadia as a District Revitalization Tool
The vast majority of all studies of the economic and developmental benefits of sports stadia have focused upon effects at the city, county, or metropolitan level. Stadium proponents have suggested that these studies overlook the area most likely to be impacted by a new facility, the micro-level. (Chema 1996) They argue that studies of jobs and taxes at these larger geographic levels dilute any positive benefits that the facility may bring to a smaller portion of the city. Even opponents of public investment into sports facilities have concluded that a new sports facility likely has an impact at a smaller geographic level than these larger geographic regions (Rosentraub 1996). The seminal paper by Baade and Dye (1988) concludes that stadia have the ability to generate ancillary development for a district, but only when certain conditions are met. (7)
There are only a very few studies that examine the microarea effects of sports stadia. By far the best of these is a chapter by Ziona Austrian and Mark Rosentraub (1997) that assesses the generation of jobs in the Cleveland Gateway microarea, a 28 acre, $460 million project which is home to both Jacobs Field (MLB’s Indians) and Gund Arena (NBA’s Cavaliers). They used a state of Ohio dataset to track the elimination and creation of jobs in the Gateway area and in the surrounding metropolitan area. They found that Gateway did realize some job growth, but that this growth was actually slower than the county and metropolitan area. (8) Their work pioneers the use of an identified "microarea" to measure the benefits (and costs) of these sports facilities. However, their analysis still uses jobs as the principal measure and only discusses peripherally the ability of Gateway to revitalize that portion of Cleveland’s downtown. (9)
As noted above, the Baade and Dye (1988) article also outlines the possible positive and negative impacts of a sports facility on microarea (re)development. For example, the authors point out that microarea development is predicated on the regular use of the facility, linking the project to other nearby activity centers, capturing spending in the microarea, and deterring the spread of surface parking into the neighborhood. Despite these excellent recommendations, this article serves primarily as a review of the literature and only points to possible research avenues to determine the success (or lack thereof) of stadia in revitalizing portions of the city. So, unlike the other touted benefits of sports facilities described above, very little research has investigated the ability of sports facilities to "revitalize" their surrounding microarea’s. Instead anecdotal evidence of the revitalizing ability of these facilities remains the standard by which politicians and citizens must judge. This study is an attempt to bridge this gap.
This study attempts to unite the microarea concept of Austrian and Rosentraub (1997), with the neighborhood development concepts of Baade and Dye (1988), and the key objectives of special activity generators (like stadia) as set out by Robertson (1995). For this reason, then, this paper attempts to assess the ability of new sports stadia to generate new construction or the re-use of existing structures in their surrounding microarea. The microarea will be defined as that area surrounding the new facility that is most impacted by crowds attending events at the facility and most impacted by the activity, economic and social, generated by the facility.
In each case, a microarea surrounding each new stadium had to be identified. Factors impacting the size and orientation of the microarea are; natural features (like the Harbor in Baltimore or the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland); man-made barriers (like major roads, rail lines); the location of nearby on-site and off-site parking; the location of nearby mass transportation nodes; the location of other nearby activity nodes; perceptual barriers (like perceived high-crime areas); and promoted districts (like identified entertainment districts or promoted recreation areas). Each of these either constrains the size of the microarea, by limiting pedestrian and automobile traffic, or expands the microarea, by bringing these areas into the economic and social fabric of the district. In determining the size and location of the microareas, interviews with local experts were employed to help calibrate the boundaries of this geography based upon their experiences with the district. (10)
Variables Assessed
After the delineation of these microareas, three variables were closely assessed to determine the effects of the stadium on the surrounding district. These variables are based upon the three impacts outlined by Robertson; 1) Spinoff Development in the Microarea, 2) New Construction in the Microarea, and 3) Changes to Microarea Character. Data was collected for the microarea for several years prior to the new facility and in subsequent years. It is important to note, as Austrian and Rosentraub did in their 1997 study, that the short time period since the opening of these facilities might minimize the measured effects to their respective microareas. As we shall see, new hotels and other development is planned or just beginning construction in each of the case microareas, giving weight to this caution.
A wide variety of data, both quantitative and qualitative, was gathered for this study. Parcel level land use and zoning data was collected for the period 1990-1998. Major construction projects, both completed and planner or under construction, were tracked and mapped to the microarea. In addition, aerial photographs were used to track new construction as well. Any studies of the surrounding districts completed by the city or state departments, the sports franchises, the stadium authorities, or any other agencies were referenced to assess district character and conditions prior to the construction of these facilities. Key planning documents, like comprehensive plans and project plans, were consulted to establish benchmarks for these districts as well as to determine the "fit" of these projects into the long term plans of the city. Interviews with local experts were conducted to discuss the perceptions of these districts locally, regionally, and nationally. Perhaps most useful, site visits to these districts allowed the author to walk the microareas, map these districts, and witness firsthand the use of these spaces during event and non-event times.
For each case study, pre-stadium and post-stadium conditions were assessed for each microarea. New developments and re-used buildings were identified, with an eye towards locating the most likely spin-offs like hotel, restaurants, and commercial businesses. The location of key transportation elements were mapped, with particular attention paid to the location of surface parking and parking decks in the microarea. The character of these areas prior to the opening of the stadia was established by mapping 1990 census data for these districts, reviewing of local histories, government documents, and newspaper articles, and interviewing local experts on the area.
A key problem of this study is linking any new development directly to the new stadium. For example, in each case new hotels and restaurants appeared in the microarea after the opening of these stadia. Did the stadia cause these developments or did the improving conditions in downtown Cleveland, the nearby attractions of Inner Harbor in Baltimore, and the highway access in Arlington drive these developments? Unfortunately, there is no way to determine in each case if the stadium was the principal factor in a given new development other than through a costly, but flawed post-development survey. Consequently a procedure for identifying those projects most likely to be generated (at least in part by) the stadia was developed.
The type and character of each new development was first considered. Those projects that seemed to thrive on the activity generated by the stadia were identified. Following the identification of these microarea changes, site visits then helped to establish the use of these possible spin-off developments during event and non-event periods, thereby identifying those projects most directly impacted by activity at the stadia. In addition, interviews with local experts helped to further identify those projects that were most likely generated by the new stadia. Using a variety of data, then, new construction and new development was assessed on a project by project basis to determine the impact of the stadium in its development.
The Case Cities and Stadia
The cities of Baltimore, Cleveland, and Arlington (TX) were chosen as cases for this study. Each is home to a baseball-only facility that opened in 1992 (Baltimore) or 1994 (Cleveland and Arlington) and is widely agreed to be among the best baseball stadiums in the country. The Baltimore and Cleveland stadia are multi-use stadia projects located on the edges of their respective downtowns. Baltimore’s Camden Yards consists of a baseball stadium that opened in 1992 and a football stadium that finally opened in 1998. Cleveland’s Gateway Project consists of the Jacobs Field baseball stadium (1994) and Gund Arena (1994), home to an NBA franchise. Arlington’s stadia is located in a suburban city located midway between Dallas and Fort-Worth. Arlington has attempted to use their new stadium as a major development anchor in their fast-growing city. The Ballpark in Arlington also opened in 1994, but does not contain any other sports projects.
These cases were chosen for three key reasons. First and foremost, these stadia represent the current model for almost all sports facilities constructed in North America since their opening. In particular, Camden Yards in Baltimore has become the model for all baseball stadia (and many football stadia and hockey/basketball arenas). Planning staff in Baltimore stated that they regularly receive calls and visits from cities across the continent building new sports facilities because of the perceived success of their ballpark. (11) Cleveland’s Gateway project has also been studied closely by other cities, while Arlington has served as a model for suburban jurisdictions considering investment in sports facilities.
Second, these stadia have key design elements that have become standard for all sports stadia recently constructed or currently under construction. They are single-use facilities, which is the trend in stadium design now. These facilities also contain a mix of uses that serve to make the area more vibrant and active than with the previous generation of stadia and arenas. Office space for the teams (All) and office space for rent (Baltimore and Arlington) are located in these projects. Team stores to sell apparel and souvenirs are located on site (All) as are restaurants (All) that are often open on non-game days to lunch traffic and visitors to the stadia. Ample public spaces litter the sites of all three projects and all three were busy with traffic during site visits on gamedays and non-event days.
An additional design element that has been lauded by urban designers and architects has been the "fit" of the stadia into their districts. The stadia generally conform to their surrounding street grids. Previous generations of stadia required "blockbusting", or destroying the existing street pattern for megaprojects that imposed upon the city. In addition, the size of the stadia do not overpower their neighborhoods, rather Baltimore and Cleveland’s stadia seem a natural part of the urban fabric rather than an intrusion upon it. In addition, these stadia have an external orientation that invites the city into the stadium, rather than closing itself off to the city much as the domes and the concrete doughnuts of the 1960s and 1970s did.
Third and last, these stadia were chosen because they represent the "success stories" of sports stadia in recent decades. Stadium historians, architects, planners, sports fans, developers, and the press have anointed each of these stadia as models of how large projects can positively benefit a region, a city, and a neighborhood. Therefore, rather than hunting for any possible neighborhood benefits in cases that are widely agreed to be major failures (Chicago’s new Comiskey Park for example), these stadia represent an attempt by the author to catalogue the range of microarea benefits under the best possible conditions. These cases are widely considered to be "the best" sports facilities that have been built in North America in decades. It is expected, then, that the full range of positive microarea benefits will be revealed in these cases. This methodology mirrors the "if you can’t find benefits here, you can’t find them anywhere" rationale used by Rosentraub in his studies of Indianapolis. (12) (Rosentraub et al 1994; Rosentraub 1997, Chapter 6)
If there is one stadium responsible for continuing the professional sports facility building boom, it is Oriole Park at Camden Yards. (13) After over twenty years of lobbying, MLB’s Orioles finally saw their dream ballpark open in 1992 on the western edge of Baltimore’s downtown to national acclaim from architects, planners, and mayors. Part of a complex of stadia that eventually included the new "Raven’s Stadium" (14) (opened 1998), this project re-used an old railyards littered with old warehouses and land under an interstate to squeeze a retro-ballpark into the foremost example of bringing professional sports back to the central city. The master stroke was the re-use of "The Warehouse", at 1,016 feet the longest building on the east coast, as office space and retail/restaurant space, thereby ensuring the historic character of the stadium and the perception that the stadium is truly part of the city.
Following on the previous success of the Inner Harbor, which is home to a science center, an aquarium, the Harborplace food/gift pavilions, and a host of other tourism-related developments, Baltimore has refashioned their former waterfront into a model of downtown revitalization envied throughout North America. Cleveland, New Orleans, Vancouver, and numerous other cities have attempted to model their waterfronts on Baltimore’s success. More important for this discussion, the perceived success of Camden Yards in "revitalizing" (an already largely revitalized) downtown Baltimore has fueled the stadium building boom, with many cities building facilities reminiscent of the pseudo-historical, mixed-use ballpark popularized by this city. Political leaders and downtown advocates regularly tout the "Baltimore model" for their new sports facilities and calls and visits to Baltimore are part of almost all stadium building processes these days. (15)
Camden Yards has been lauded because it helps to bring people to downtown Baltimore and make visits downtown and even city-living attractive again. What many have overlooked, however, is that Baltimore’s Inner Harbor area has long been a successful, thriving destination center. In fact, Camden Yards has done surprisingly little in terms of new development in this district of the city. As will be shown, the primary effect of the project has been to spread the economic and social activity a few blocks west, but the expansion of this entertainment district has yet to generate significant new development. Instead, Camden Yards has served to improve the "efficiency" of downtown, helping to secure the continued success of the Inner Harbor and even to help drive some new enterprises in that area of the city.
The Camden Yards Microarea
Camden Yards is situated on the western edge of Baltimore’s central business district, a scant half-mile from the very successful Inner Harbor festival marketplace. Camden Yards was a former railyards and warehouse area that had long been one of the busiest parts of the city. However, with the restructuring of the economy away from an traditional industrial job base and towards the service sector, the rail yards fell largely silent and the warehouses in the area followed the all-too-common process of disuse and deterioration. As of 1985 this area was home to a mish-mash of uses, some heavy industry, manufacturing business, a few bars, and even a doughnut shop, but its strategic location just west of the thriving Inner Harbor area made it a desirable district for revitalization.
The city’s first major league stadium, Memorial Stadium, was located to the northeast of downtown, in a middle class residential neighborhood. The process of moving the regional sports epicenter to the Camden Yards area was thirty years in coming. (Richmond 1994) As early as 1968, some fanciful plans for a new Camden Yards ballpark were drawn up. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the city, MLB’s Orioles, and the NFL’s Colts discussed plans to build a new stadium (or two stadia) at Camden Yards. These well-laid plans did not come to fruition until Baltimore lost its NFL franchise in 1984 when the Colts bolted for Indianapolis. At that point the Orioles, the city, and the state of Maryland came together and hammered out a deal to build the stadium at Camden Yards, with former Mayor Schaeffer (and later Governor) pushing for the inner city site as a means of furthering the redevelopment of Baltimore’s inner city. Oriole Park opened in 1992 and the Ravens Stadium opened in 1998.
A look at the Camden Yards Microarea (see Map 1), reveals it to have a long east-west orientation, with very little area to the southeast and west of the stadia serving as part of this district. The Inner Harbor, with its Pavilions, Aquarium, newly renovated Power Plant, and other tourism project, is located to the east of Camden Yards. Between Inner Harbor and Camden Yards sits the Otterbein neighborhood, a beautiful middle to upper class enclave protected from stadium crowds by a maze of streets and strict parking enforcement. Pratt Street represents the primary east-west arterial in this district, along which pedestrian and vehicular traffic circulates throughout this district on event and non-event days. Pratt Street is by far the most lively street in downtown, anchored by Inner Harbor at one end and a University and Camden Yards at the other. Other SAG’s like the Convention Center and the Baltimore Arena are located in the microarea, further establishing this as a recreational Mecca envied by cities across North America. The southwestern portion of the microarea lies in a former industrial district, one that is being pushed out by the new Ravens Stadium and large surface parking lots. This portion of the district is dominated by Russell/Greene Streets, a large north-south arterial. The western boundary of the district is Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, another important arterial because it serves as a very strong dividing line between middle class downtown Baltimore (mostly white) and lower class downtown Baltimore (mostly African-American). At the center of this microarea is Oriole Park at Camden Yards, The Warehouse, and the renovated Camden Station.
Development in the Camden Yards Microarea
A review of planning documents, aerial photographs, and targeted interviews reveals a surprising secret about the "success" that is Camden Yards. Despite the international acclaim for the project, very little new construction has accompanied the ballpark and the new football stadium. Only a few major projects have been completed in recent years: a large addition to the Convention Center that faces towards Camden Yards, another renovation of the Power Plant in the eastern portion of Inner Harbor(16), and large new facilities on the UM-B campus. However, none of these is directly attributable to the stadia as the convention center had long been planning for expansion, UM-B would almost certainly have invested heavily into their downtown campus regardless of nearby sports projects, and the Power Plant development is predicated more on the overall success of Inner Harbor and not specifically on Camden Yards, although the ESPN Sportszone would not have come to Baltimore without the current crown jewel of sports, Oriole Park Camden Yards.
A look at recent hotel development yields a similarly surprising finding as no new hotels have opened in downtown Baltimore in recent years. Some of the nearby hotels have undergone major renovations, but the SAG objective of generating nearby development in the microarea, especially hotels, has not been realized in Baltimore as of yet. As of this writing, three new hotels are being planned for downtown Baltimore, with two falling within the Camden Yards Microarea. Of these, one would be sited across from the Inner Harbor along Pratt and the second would be located on land immediately north of Camden Yards, to be built by the owner of the Orioles. (17) (See B-2) As for restaurant development, there are a handful of new eateries in the western portion of the microarea, but not as many as might be expected. Very little development has moved north of the baseball stadium, across Pratt Street, and this area remains largely devoid of life on non-event days. To the further west, the combination of MLK Jr. Boulevard and the worries of crime serve as a staunch barrier to any spin-off to these areas. To the south of Camden Yards lies industrial areas, littered with under-utilized warehouses, a number manufacturing businesses, and a growing army of surface parking lots.
It would seem, then, that despite the press, Camden Yards has generally had little effect upon its district. However, these apparent lack of changes to the microarea are tempered by several factors: 1) The Warehouse and the soon to open Camden Station, with office space, commercial space, and restaurants, have captured some of the spin-off development generated by a new stadium; 2) Inner Harbor has long been established as an entertainment district and the requisite hotels, bars, and restaurants have long been located in these areas; 3) the Camden Yards Microarea was largely built-out as of 1990, with only a handful of large parcels available for development; and 4) existing anchors, residential neighborhoods, and industrial districts have effectively limited the ability of the stadia to generate new construction that accompanies many SAG’s. In the words of James French of the city planning office, "Primarily, what Camden Yards has done is to extend Inner Harbor a few blocks west and to make the existing businesses more successful and more efficient." (18)
Assessing Camden Yards
In 1998 the Camden Yards Microarea looks and operates strikingly similar to ten years earlier. The insulated neighborhoods of Ridgely’s Delight and Otterbein still serve as very nice in-town neighborhoods. Inner Harbor still thrives, with some new projects, but still resting on the economic base of recreation and tourism dollars. The Convention Center brings in large numbers of out-of-town guests, priming the local economy and filling local hotels. The University serves as the western terminus of downtown, with Camden Yards now also helping to fulfill that role. The evidence indicates that, much like the convention center, crowds at Camden Yards help to fuel the economy, strengthening Inner Harbor, but have done little in terms of creating new projects and spreading the wealth into nearby poor and underutilized areas of the city.
So, despite the national press and public adulation for Oriole Park and the Ravens Stadium, the record should indicate that Camden Yards has not served as a "district revitalization tool" for Baltimore. Despite the gushing of local politicians, Major League Baseball, and downtown interests over the success of Camden Yards, much of the vibrant, urban energy in the district would be present with or without baseball and football for one-hundred days a year. Certainly, the infusion of over four million sports fans has been a boon to the existing businesses, but in Baltimore’s case this has resulted primarily in greater efficiency of existing business rather than new development and new opportunities in the microarea.
When using Robertson’s objectives of SAG’s, the record should show that Camden Yards has been "icing on the cake" for Baltimore, but not the "cake" that the local economy can satiate itself on. Camden Yards has generated substantial spending, but a significant portion of this has been in the existing Inner Harbor entertainment area and not in the immediate area. Some new businesses have been created, but most of these are in the existing Inner Harbor area and very few have sprung up in the western and northern portions of the microarea. In terms of new construction, Baltimore has been strikingly unaffected by the new stadia in downtown. Plans exist for new hotels, but the area has seen more demolition or clearing of land for large surface parking lots than new projects springing from the ground. On the positive side, the Camden Yards area has certainly changed in character when comparing the pre- and post-stadia eras. No longer a dilapidated railyards, littered with warehouses and a fascinating mix of industrial and commercial uses, the district now presents a much better fit for the reoriented downtown Baltimore economy. Camden Yards certainly has extended the success of Inner Harbor a few blocks, but primarily only on event days. While a wonderful, exciting, pedestrian-oriented, urban space during events, Camden Yards should be recognized for what it is and not what its boosters claim it to be; a landmark, an architectural gem, an important entertainment facility, but not an example of a sports facility as an urban revitalization tool.
Perhaps the foremost symbol of the "New American City" (19) of Cleveland is the Gateway Project, a $460 million (and counting) sports and office development completed in 1994. Within Gateway is the glowing baseball-only stadium Jacobs Field, home to the resurgent Indians of Major League Baseball, and Gund Arena, a sports and entertainment arena that returned the NBA’s Cavaliers back downtown and also hosts a wide array of other events, including hockey games and concerts. Despite the revitalization of Playhouse Square (Cleveland’s decades old theater district), the construction of numerous office towers and hotels, and two new downtown malls, the project that has brought the most national attention to the city has been Gateway and, more specifically, the retro-ballpark Jacobs Field. (Hirzel 1995) Built on the site of an old inner city market, Gateway was completed only after ten years of planning and only after public dollars were poured into what was originally intended to be a largely private venture. In pushing Gateway, project backers used the catchphrase "more than a stadium" to suggest that Gateway would do more than just provide new venues for the Indians and Cavs. As we shall see, in the case of Cleveland the stadium backers were right.
Gateway has had a significant effect upon downtown Cleveland in its few short years and its success has no doubt been a factor in a new round of plans for downtown Cleveland. (Hirzel 1995; Bullard 1998; Knack 1999) Downtown backers point to the millions of visitors pouring into downtown to attend Indians and Cavaliers games. Once a ghost town after dark, the city center now has two vibrant urban districts, one directly attributable to Gateway. The district surrounding the project has witnessed something of a revival, with numerous new restaurants and a handful of hotels planned for the area. While Gateway proponents cite these changes to Cleveland’s downtown as evidence of the project’s success, critics have lined up to counter the wisdom of this public investment. (Keating 1997; Krumholz; 1995; Rosentraub 1997) Critics have been quick to note that Gateway indeed represents just that kind of project being built in downtown America in the 1990s. Numerous analysts have noted that the economic benefits of the project have been far below those originally projected. (Rosentraub 1997; Austrian and Rosentraub, 1997). The economic shortcomings of the project aside, critics of Gateway have suggested that the city and the county could have spent their funds more wisely and with better effect on jobs programs or projects that more directly benefit Cleveland’s increasingly impoverished inner-city residents.
The Gateway Microarea
Unlike Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium, which was located adjacent to downtown along the Lake Erie waterfront, Gateway was located in a central downtown location, with excellent interstate access. Just south of the business core, Gateway is so named because the site represents a major "gateway" into Cleveland as it sits adjacent to the confluence of Interstates 90 and 77. These interstates represent the southern boundary of the Gateway district, providing a very stalwart barrier to any spillovers to areas south of the stadium. Along the western edge sits a set of rail lines as well as the Cuyahoga River, just across Ontario Street, providing another barrier to spillovers and pushing any benefits into downtown proper to the north or towards Cleveland State University to the east. To the north of Gateway sits the central business district with a number of other major downtown renewal projects nearby, including Tower City Center (formerly the Terminal Tower Complex), and the BP America Building. The northern boundary for much of the microarea is Superior Avenue, a major east-west thoroughfare in downtown Cleveland. To the east lies Playhouse Square, another major redevelopment focus for the city that has successfully renovated a number of old theaters and helped to bring to life that threatened district.
The Gateway Microarea (shown in Map 3) includes the entire Historic Gateway Neighborhood District (HGND) as defined by the Historic Gateway Neighborhood Development Corporation (1997). This development corporation was formed in 1992 (spurred by Gateway) from two formerly separate local merchants groups and the neighborhood district covers these two portions of the city. This district includes portions of Euclid Avenue, the center of the old downtown retail district in Cleveland that has seen difficult times in recent decades. Littered with vacant buildings and many marginal businesses, the city has been very interested in seeing Euclid returned to a semblance of its glory days. To the east of Jacobs Field sits Erie Cemetery, a field of green in a very urban setting. The remainder of the Gateway District is a mix of street-level retail (some vacant), office buildings (much vacant), large parking decks, surface lots, and a few older apartment buildings.
Development in the Gateway Microarea
Like Baltimore, Cleveland’s Gateway is an urban sports development, tucked in a high density neighborhood, surrounded by different land uses, and one that interacts daily with the social and economic fabric of its host district. It has been hailed as an urban success story and an example of the success of a public-private partnership in spurring the renewal of a downtown district. (Bullard 1998; Hirzel 1996; Brown and Laumer 1995) However, a look at the built form in the surrounding district prior to Gateway and post-Gateway showcases very few changes to the district. At first glance Gateway does not appear to have fulfilled a primary objective of generating new development in the microarea.
However, when recent major (re)development projects are mapped in downtown Cleveland, a large number of these are located in the Gateway Microarea. Currently two new hotels are under development in the microarea and at least three others have been announced for the district as well. Prior to Gateway, the district was home to only a very few restaurants, but now the area overflows with them, many of them sports-themed, that are bustling on event days. (See Map 4) While a number of these restaurants have failed, the success of a most of them indicates that finding and serving a niche has been a successful business strategy. As a result of the Gateway project, downtown Cleveland now has a second recreational district that attracts tourists and suburbanites to the city and stays alive when offices close at the end of the day or the end of the week. (20) The vast majority of these projects are located, not in newly constructed buildings, but rather in long-vacant storefronts or formerly run-down office/warehouse buildings. In addition to these completed projects, proposed projects are shown on the map as well.
In addition to the expected hotel and restaurant development, perhaps the most exciting development is the generation of new housing in the Gateway area since the opening of the stadia. As seen in Map 4, a number of buildings in the Gateway Microarea have been restored as condominium and apartment housing. These housing projects are attributable to Gateway, in part through the improvements to the neighborhood physical setting and in part due to the activity generated by the stadia. (21) Stadium proponents point to these projects as the best sign that a stadium can resuscitate a district as middle and upper class households are returning to this area for the first time in decades. Critics of Gateway have suggested that these projects are more related to a pent up demand for downtown housing or to major subsidies to downtown housing projects.(22)
Assessing the Gateway Project
While Baltimore’s Camden Yards is widely acclaimed as the preeminent example of sports stadia as an economic development tool, Cleveland’s Gateway Project actually showcases more clearly what a well-planned and well-sited facility can do for a downtown district. Indications are that Gateway has spurred a significant level of new hotel and restaurant projects in the microarea, with several new hotels soon to break ground. Further, accompanying this expected hotel and restaurant development has been a number of residential projects in the Gateway District. Cleveland has successfully leveraged a second downtown entertainment district and some new downtown housing with their, albeit significant, investments.
When assessed via the three objectives of SAG’s, Cleveland’s Gateway project performs very well. In generating spillover benefits to the microarea, Gateway has been heavily involved in the production of two new hotels and at least ten new restaurants in an area with only marginal businesses and vacant buildings in 1990. New commercial businesses dot the district, with additional plans calling for new commercial space in the Colonial and Euclid Arcades, turn of the century retail centers that later showed the way for indoor shopping malls. (Bullard 1997) In addition, Tower City Center, a huge new underground mall in the old Terminal Tower Complex that also includes the main transit station in downtown, has enjoyed positive benefits from Gateway as crowds eat at the food court and shop in stores prior to using a tunnel that connects this mall to Gateway. As in Baltimore, existing businesses that are compatible with the purchasing patterns of suburban, middle class sports fans have generally fared quite well with the opening of Gateway. The efficiency of downtown Cleveland retail businesses has certainly improved.
Unlike the suburban Arlington case that follows, Cleveland and Baltimore have seen very little new construction surrounding their new facilities. In fact, Gateway has actually seen more buildings razed for the project than built after its completion. However, as discussed above, a number of large, formerly vacant buildings have been re-used as a direct result of Gateway’s success. New hotels and restaurants and, perhaps more importantly, downtown residential projects have opened or begun renovation due to the over five million visitors to this district each year. Whereas previous years have seen very little new construction, current plans call for two new hotels to be built on parcels immediately adjacent to Jacobs Field. In sum, because downtown Cleveland is largely "built-out", Gateway has seen redevelopment rather than new development, an option palatable to historic preservationists, downtown developers, and the Historic Gateway Neighborhood development corporation.
Lastly, there can be absolutely no doubt that the character of this district has been positively influenced by the Gateway project. Whereas formerly the area consisted of huge surface parking lots, empty buildings, broken windows, and marginal businesses, the area now represents a popular, vibrant, and safe enclave in downtown Cleveland. People are moving into the district, old buildings continue to be renovated, and businesses continue to thrive. More importantly, Gateway gets suburbanites and tourists into downtown Cleveland on nights and weekends throughout the year. The successful integration of an urban ballpark and arena into the downtown fabric has repaid Cleveland with a glitzy, hot new district. Gateway then, moreso even than Camden Yards, presents an example of a city using sports facilities as district revitalization tools to great success.
In 1994 the city of Arlington, Texas proudly opened The Ballpark in Arlington, the first suburban facility built on the pseudo-historical, multi-use facility model that had become prevalent in sports facility design in the 1990s. Located on part of a sprawling almost three-hundred acre site, adjacent to Interstate 30, the Ballpark represents a prime example of the suburban stadium; excellent freeway access, ample on-site parking, very poor (in this case non-existent) public transportation links, low density nearby development, and substantial land available for (re)development. Financed largely by an increase in the local sales tax, the Ballpark has clearly been a financial success for the team that calls it home, MLB’s Texas Rangers, and, in many ways, for the city of Arlington as well.
Unlike the stadia in Baltimore and Cleveland, The Ballpark in Arlington is not an urban facility, situated in a dense, busy, messy downtown core. Rather, the Ballpark is located in a suburban district long under-utilized despite an existing baseball stadium on the site. Recall that Baltimore’s Camden Yards and Cleveland’s Jacobs Field were built downtown in an effort to generate the many spin-off developments associated with sports facilities, perhaps the most important of which was attracting suburban dollars back to an inner city in great danger of succumbing to the problems inherent to most urban cores of the northeast. In contrast, the Ballpark is located in a section of Arlington situated between their downtown core (truly a suburban downtown core, with most buildings only a few stories tall) and a huge amusement park, Six Flags over Texas.
This area was home to the old Arlington Stadium, the original home of the Rangers. In the 1980s this district was identified as a promising entertainment area, in part because of the excellent freeway access, a lack of existing development, and low land costs. (City of Arlington 1987) Despite excellent access from all directions, the presence of major tourist attractions, like Six Flags and the old stadium, a major General Motors plant less than two miles away, and a major shopping mall nearby, this area contained only sporadic development throughout the 1980s. In 1990, the district surrounding the future Ballpark was best described as hugely underdeveloped given its locational advantages. Since 1987, however, this district has begun to take shape as a regional center for tourism and as a home to numerous new hotels, restaurants, and tourism-related development, in part because of overt decisions outlined in the city’s Comprehensive Plan of the same year.
The Ballpark Microarea
The original Arlington Stadium and the new Ballpark were sited within a half a mile of Interstate 30, one of two east-west superhighways that cross Arlington. This site offered stadium-goers excellent vehicular access and helped to fill out an area of the city that Arlington had long promoted as an industrial area. To the west of the stadia lies a major north-south arterial, Collins Street, that also provides access to the Interstate 30. By 1990 Collins Street had developed as a major retail/commercial strip, with many fast food restaurants, strip malls, and shopping centers. Across Interstate 30 to the north lies a fascinating area, with a mix of housing, retail, and office developments. The primary east-west arterial for this area is Lamar Boulevard, a divided four lane road, along which are a number of large apartment projects, numerous hotels, and a growing set of office and business parks. In addition, a large set of vacant or under-developed land can be found along Lamar, making this area one of the fastest growing areas in Arlington.
The principal highway along the eastern side of the area is State Highway 360 (SH 360), formerly a four lane arterial that has been expanded into a six lane, limited access, divided highway for much of the length of Arlington. SH 360, for all purposes, serves as a major highway for the city, in large part because it is one of the principal routes to DFW Airport to the north. Along the southern edge of the area lies Division Street, another east-west arterial for Arlington, one with access to SH360 to the east and a direct feeder into downtown Arlington to the west. Division Street is another four to six lane arterial, along which travels a great deal of truck traffic that serves the Six Flags Business Park. Rail lines serving the industrial portions of this district run along much of Division Street as well. Also criss-crossing the area is Johnson Creek, an important waterway for the city because it serves as a major collector of runoff during the area’s many thunderstorms. The creek runs from northeast to southwest, usually with low water levels and a great deal of unused capacity. The role of Johnson Creek as an important storm water management tool has served as both an amenity to the area and as an obstacle to development on the site.
The Ballpark Microarea is shown in Map 5. It includes the entire Entertainment District as defined by the city of Arlington and portions of the nearby industrial park as well. (23) Generally, the Ballpark Microarea is bounded by Collins Street on the west, Lamar Boulevard and Brookhollow Plaza Road to the north, SH360 to the east, and a combination of Randol Mill Road, Stadium Drive, and Road to Six Flags East to the south. The microarea surrounding the Ballpark is somewhat larger than those around Camden Yards and Jacobs Field. This microarea crosses a major Interstate (I-30) and includes several major arterials that criss-cross the area, man-made barriers that acted as boundaries in the urban cases.
Development in the Ballpark Microarea
In the growing suburban city of Arlington, the pro-stadium argument outlined earlier is supported by changes to the Ballpark Microarea. In the surrounding microarea a substantial amount of new development has occurred since 1992. (See Map 6) The majority of these projects have been built in the northeastern and eastern portions of the microarea reflecting the district’s orientation towards SH360 and the I-30/SH360 interchange. Between 1992 and 1998 a total of ten new hotels have opened or begun construction in the microarea. Further, plans exist for at least two new hotels in the microarea. (Arlington Convention and Visitors Bureau 1997) In addition to this new hotel development, eight new restaurants have been built since 1992. These restaurants are larger, tourism and recreation oriented establishments, catering to families and businesspeople visiting the Ballpark, Six Flags, and the Convention Center. Again, local officials would not state that these restaurants were built solely because of the new stadium, but they did indicate that the Ballpark was a major factor in their construction.
In addition to the above changes, other intangible benefits can be linked to the new Ballpark as well. The Arlington Convention Center is undergoing an expansion, in part due to the success of the Ballpark in making Arlington a known commodity among conventioneers and a viable location for conventions.(24) As for the character of the district, the Entertainment District is fast cementing the city’s stated goal of making Arlington as the center of the recreation activity in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. The area continues to build out and specialize as a tourism and recreation center for visitors and residents alike. The addition of the lakes, a little league ballfield, and parks in the area and plans for a riverwalk along Johnson Creek and an amphitheater for concerts and plays adding to the area’s character and use.
Assessing the Ballpark
Clearly, the location of the city of Arlington in the center of the DFW Metroplex and its excellent transportation connections make Arlington an ideal area for residential and employment growth. If the Ballpark had never been built the city of Arlington would likely look very similar to its current arrangement as a suburban "edge city" on the rise. Further, the location of Six Flags, the Convention Center, and other tourism and recreational attractions almost guarantee that much of the growth in this microarea would have been secured without a new ballpark. However, even given these conditions, local experts insisted that the Ballpark has been a major factor in the continued specialization of the Entertainment District. While Planning Staff, the Visitor’s Bureau, and the Chamber of Commerce could not directly link the new Ballpark to the new developments on a project by project basis, they strongly believed that the development and location of these projects was in large part the result of a new Ballpark that attracts three million baseball fans a year to the area, that confers intangible image benefits to the city, and provides a destination for visitors and conventioneers for over eighty dates a year.
As for the three objectives of SAG’s outlined by Robertson, there is strong evidence that the Ballpark has done well to meet these objectives. First, the Ballpark most certainly helps the efficiency of the surrounding district, keeping restaurants and hotels busy and helping to drive the demand for new development. Existing development has been supported by visitors to the Ballpark and many businesses have even gone so far as to promote themselves with the Ballpark in mind.(25) Second, as to the objective of spurring new development, a total of ten new hotels have opened or are under construction and at least eight new restaurants have opened their doors since the Ballpark began construction in 1992. Further plans for new hotels and restaurants are currently in the development pipeline. In addition, a number of hotels and restaurants have undergone major renovations not shown in Map 6 as well. The Ballpark was a factor in all of these although intervening factors also have certainly contributed to the construction of many of these projects.
Third, and last, it is clear that the character of the district has been cemented by the siting of the Ballpark in this area. The Ballpark in Arlington has been the primary factor in the district-level planning undertaken by the city and the re-orientation of the district exclusively towards entertainment uses. Prior to the planning for the new Ballpark, the city of Arlington considered this area a joint industrial and recreation center, with an uneasy mix between the two. The new Ballpark galvanized the city to develop a vision for the area, change the zoning of the district to a more compatible "Festival" zoning designation, and plan for the entire microarea rather than promote development in a piecemeal basis. (Chapin, 1998) There is every indication that this planning and promotion will continue to be a success and that Arlington will continue its ascent to the top of the regional recreational ladder.
Stadium promoters have long argued that these facilities provide a wide range of benefits for their host jurisdictions. Among these are metropolitan economic growth, thousands of new jobs, higher tax revenues, and intangible benefits leading to national prestige and marketability. Many researchers have questioned these benefits and through careful research revealed them to be little more than promotional figures rather than actual benefits. However, one item promised by stadium promoters has received only minimal attention; the ability of a sports facility to affect change at the micro-level. While stadium proponents have promised microarea benefits, few studies have attempted to assess the ability of sports facilities to "revitalize" their districts.
This paper has attempted to catalogue and assess the microarea benefits of the three stadia thought to be the most successful in "revitalizing" their surrounding districts. In Baltimore the evidence shows that Camden Yards has been a wonderful primer for the Inner Harbor’s economy, but has done surprisingly little for the areas immediately surrounding it. New construction has not accompanied Camden Yards, but large surface parking lots have. In contrast, the Gateway Project in Cleveland was shown to be a major impetus in the revitalization of that city’s Gateway District. New hotels and restaurants in formerly vacant warehouses have not only helped to make Gateway an exciting entertainment district, but also an emerging residential neighborhood. In suburban Arlington, the new Ballpark in Arlington has been a principal factor in tremendous growth in that city’s entertainment district. Again, new hotels and restaurants, this time in the form of new construction upon acres and acres of vacant suburban land, can be traced, in part, to the new stadium and its large crowds. Arlington used the new stadium as a major factor in reorganizing and reorienting the district explicitly to recreational uses, simplifying the development process and sending a clear message to local developers.
These case studies suggest a few key implications for cities and regions choosing to invest in sports stadia (and other large special activity generators). These are:
As a caveat, it must be made clear that all of the benefits outlined above do not come without huge economic and social costs. In Cleveland, for example, critics have been quick to point out that the direct and indirect public expenditures on Gateway have been huge. They suggest that over $400 million in direct construction costs and anywhere between $100 and $200 million in indirect costs would revitalize almost any district, much less Gateway. (27) They also are quick to point out that many of the social ills (drugs, prostitution, other crime) present in the district have not been arrested, but rather relocated into neighboring areas. Further, studies have found that in terms of jobs and taxes, Gateway has most certainly been a bust. In Baltimore, while Inner Harbor continues to thrive, the nearby Pigtown neighborhood continues to decline, the old shopping district to the north shows no positive benefits related to the stadia, and some industrial areas to the south and west are being paved over for parking. Arlington continues to specialize their Ballpark district for entertainment at the same time it promotes an adjacent industrial district as an enterprise zone. The interface of the two districts showcases an uneasy mix of entertainment uses like hotels and restaurants and industrial spaces like warehouses and manufacturing businesses.
Despite their national press, then, sports stadia are not panaceas for what ills the city. Rather, they can be specialized remedies for targeted districts. The mantra "if you build it, they will come" is not entirely incorrect, but must take into account some key additions. So, to city planners, stadium builders, and proponents of special activity generators more generally, let Baltimore, Cleveland, and Arlington teach us that, "If You Build It, Plan For It, Contextualize It, and Get Lucky, They Will Come."
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1. The Major League Sports are represented by the "big four": Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Hockey League (NHL). This study does not include facilities for minor league teams, college and university teams, nor for other sports like soccer and tennis.
2. This total does include minor league facilities for the "big four" sports, but not other sports.
3. For example Baltimore’s Camden Yards generates well over $20 million a year.
4. Sports arenas are smaller facilities holding anywhere from 8,000 to 24,000 patrons primarily for the professional sports of basketball and hockey. In contrast, sports stadia are much larger facilities, with a capacity ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 to host baseball and football franchises.
5. For example, Rosentraub’s studies of the city of Indianapolis have found that while that city is no longer Indiana-No-Place, the city has not grown as fast as other regional cities and has specialized in industries that actually have lower wages and lesser benefits.
6. P. 108.
7. It is important to note that while these writers indicate that microarea benefits are possible, they emphasize that these benefits are rarely, if ever, sufficient to justify investments of hundreds of millions of dollars.
8. Pp. 379-380.
9. See also the paper by Johnson and Sack (1996). Their article attempts to move the analysis away from jobs and taxes and towards others measures of costs and benefits for cities that choose to invest in sports facilities.
10. These interviews included discussions with local planners, members of the organization overseeing each stadium, development authorities, and neighborhood groups.
11. Interview with James French and Joyce Leviton, August, 1998.
12. Rosentraub has studied Indianapolis because it has been the foremost proponent of sports as a development strategy. "Indianapolis, more than any other city, developed an articulated economic development strategy for its downtown which emphasized amateur and professional sports." Rosentraub et al, 1994).
13. According to Hamilton and Kahn (1997), "The accepted wisdom is that municipal professional sports stadiums are a bad economic deal for cities, except for Oriole Park at Camden Yards." They also note that Cleveland’s Gateway project is another exception to the rule.
14. The NFL’s Raven’s had yet to sell the naming rights the this stadium, so it is generally know as the "Raven’s Stadium" until IBM, Amtrak, or some other corporation buys the name.
15. The city planning department said that they had regular calls from other cities wondering "how they did it"; how they made Camden Yards successful. (Interview with French and Leviton, August 1998)
16. The Power Plant has seen at least two previous attempts at reusing this large, old power station in Inner Harbor. The most recent attempt includes an ESPN Sportszone, a Hard Rock Café, and a huge Barnes and Noble bookstore. Interviewees indicated that this project seems to be doing quite well and long term forecasts look promising.
17. The owner of the Orioles is demanding hefty subsidies from the city for this project, over and above what is received through Oriole Park. It would be located on what is now city-owned land that serves primarily as surface parking for the nearby stadia.
18. French interview, 1988.
19. Huge signs proclaiming Cleveland as "The New American City" can be found on all major construction and public works projects throughout the city, part of a public relations and marketing campaign strongly backed by the city government.
20. Cleveland’s Warehouse District is the second entertainment district.
21. Austrian and Rosentraub, 1997, pp. 381-382.
22. Interview with Norman Krumholz, Cleveland State University, May 1998.
23. In 1992 the City of Arlington created a new zoning designation and an official name for this district, "The Entertainment District". In addition, the "Great Southwest Enterprise Zone" is also located in this area.
24. Interview Joyce Odom, Director of the Arlington Convention Center, April 1998.
25. The Rangers Inn, The Ballpark Hotel, and numerous sports bars all clearly link their success to baseball and the new stadium.
26. Hirzel, 1993; p. 34.
27. Krumholz interview. Interview with George Zeller of the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland, May 1998.
Timothy S. Chapin
University of Washington