Siting, site planning, and connection: More thoughts about baseball

Yesterday's blog entry "A different take on DC's plan for an architectural icon baseball stadium," engendered a trenchant comment as well.

Brian comments on the article by Steve Malanga from City Journal and says--

The article seems to confuse stylistic expression in ballparks with siting of ballparks - there are also good urban modern stadiums and then there's the home of the Texas Rangers, aesthetically all that the article calls for but exhibiting the planning characteristics of a 60's facility.
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Brian is right.

Siting, site planning, and connecting to the urban fabric are all separate but inter-connected issues. This gets back to some of the points I've made in the blog, i.e., "Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Transit" or "Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Business as Usual," that it's a lot more than just focusing on any one of these issues. They have to be addressed simultaneously. If stadia were such great economic engines then places around RFK, the old Tiger Stadium, etc., would be vital, stable, thriving neighborhoods, and they are not.

I think the experience of the lamented Memorial Stadium, and Fenway Park in Boston, and Wrigleyville in Chicago demonstrate the importance of putting stadia in real places and connecting to real places. (I haven't actually been to the PacBell Stadium in San Francisco but people that I respect speak highly of it.) The reality is that the area around Camden Yards still needs a lot of work... But Wrigleyville and Fenway thrive, although they have to worry (and in some respects they have lost) about touristification and the re-direction of retail, restaurants, and services away from neighborhood-serving uses and towards the sports fans.

It's going to take a long time to "build" a "real community" in the vicinity of the forthcoming baseball stadium.

In another blog entry I proposed a trolley short line from the Navy Yard to Union Station, with a connection at Capitol South, to off-load people directly onto the red and blue-orange subway lines. Dan Tangherlini countered that DDOT is looking at a trolley along M Street SE-ending at the Navy Yard station, connecting to the proposed trolley line up 8th Street, to better connect visitors to DC retail and restaurants on Barracks Row. While I like my idea from an efficiency standpoint, I must say that from an economic development standpoint, Dan's right...

Photo by Mike Kepika of the San Francisco Chronicle. People leaving the streetcars to see a Giants game at PacBell Park.

For more thinking about connecting and layering attractions, read this article about Fred Kent and the Project for Public Places, which is reprinted from Governing Magazine.

Also see this entry, "The Future of Barracks Row?," in the June archives.

And this book review of It's Hardly Sportin': Stadiums, Neighborhoods, and the New Chicago by Costas Spirou and Larry Bennett