Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities

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Also see these related subsequent entries:

-- "You get what you plan for: the multi-use Miami Hard Rock Stadium versus typical football stadiums | Washington Commanders," 2025
-- "Good quote on arenas and stadiums as "performing arts centers" attractions for cities," 2024
-- "Capital One Arena, Wizards and Capitals may move to Alexandria | Why not the RFK campus?," 2023
-- "Revisiting "Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities" and the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team + Phoenix Coyotes hockey," 2022

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Sports stadiums and arenas and public funding is a tough issue.  Generally, based on the economic research, advocates always argue against.  But the reality is that economic interests and elected officials are generally all in.  

So a campaign based on "saying no" is likely to have little impact.

Since the facility is going to get built, with public money, now I argue that we ought to focus on extracting the best possible contract providing the greatest possible community and economic return to the locality, rather than just letting the sports team reap the majority of the benefits.

-- "Baseball World Series in DC as an opportunity for urban planning reflections: #1 | revisiting blog entries from 2005/2006,"
-- "Baseball World Series in DC #2: Eleven urban planning lessons from the Washington Nationals stadium"

Over the years, I've been working on creating an item framework, since my first crack at it in 2014.  The most recent version is from 2019 ("Stadiums and arenas redux: Mayor Bowser still wants the area NFL team to relocate to DC").

But today I am revisiting it, sparked by a community planning effort in Salt Lake City.

The Salt Lake planning process is centered around the Ballpark neighborhood-where a classically designed stadium with great views is home to the Salt Lake Bees minor league baseball team.

But the neighborhood around the park hasn't improved much in the 27 years that the stadium first opened in 1994, and it has light rail transit access to boot.

I think the key problem with the dearth of revitalization benefits is the lack of an overall planning and implementation initiative when the stadium was first constructed, although there are other issues--the railroad tracks support industrial development, there aren't a lot of build out opportunities on the east side of the tracks, closer to the stadium, the area is (not far but still) distant from Downtown, where a stadium may have made more sense from a leveraging revitalization opportunities standpoint, etc.

When the Washington Nationals put a notice on the scoreboard about last trains from the nearest transit station, fans boo the transit agency, when it is the team that has refused to guarantee service for games that go beyond the normal closing time for the system.

Creating a revitalization program for a stadium, arena, or exposition facility that is outside of a downtown or major activity center is tough.  So Salt Lake has a tough row to hoe.

So I decided to take another look at the framework, and I realized that a specific section on neighborhood benefits, if relevant to particular situations, needed to be separated out as an element.  

Note that some of these items are less relevant to smaller communities, and those lacking robust transit networks, and with a sprawl development paradigm.  

There is also a difference of opportunities between "big leagues," minor league teams, and college teams ("Economic impact of college football means season cancellation will crush college town economies reliant on sports visitation," 2020, "American City Business Journals calculates the capacity of North American metropolitan areas to support new/additional professional sports teams," 2015).

And practice facilities, which despite all that is touted by teams, seem to have very little economic impact ("Sport team practice facilities and public subsidy (a practice facility for the Washington Wizards)," 2015).  Arguably, baseball training camps are problematic too, in terms of financial subsidies from local governments.

Community Development oriented planning framework for sports stadiums and arenas

in front of Fenway Park, Boston

Urban Design 

• centrality of location: Downtown/central business district/waterfront versus outlying locations within a city or suburbs.  Negative examples include the Salt Lake Bees stadium outside of Downtown, with limited redevelopment opportunities; how the Atlanta Braves chose a suburban location for their new stadium, counter to the trend of siting in center cities; the debate in Oakland about a waterfront location versus a new stadium in their current location ("A's plan to build a new waterfront stadium at Oakland's Jack London Square takes big step forward," San Francisco Chronicle), and the location of the Real Salt Lake soccer team in the suburbs instead of the center city.  Positive examples include the waterfront stadium for the San Francisco Giants, the Downtown stadium for the Baltimore Orioles, and the relocation of the Washington Wizards basketball team and Capitals Hockey teams from the suburbs to the City of Washington;
• size of the facility and its ability to be integrated into the urban fabric (baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer), bigger stadiums--football stadiums specifically--are harder to integrate in the urban fabric.
• isolation or connection: how well is the facility integrated into the urban fabric beyond the stadium site and does it leverage, build upon, and extend the location and the community around it.  The classic example is Wrigley Field in Chicago versus White Sox Stadium ("Expert offers his dream Sox stadium," Chicago Tribune).  Wrigley Field is embedded in its neighborhood, while White Sox Stadium is disconnected from its.  But also in how Oracle Park in San Francisco leverages its waterfront location.

Oracle Park.  Photo: Ron Niebrugge.

• urban design treatment of the route to the stadium.  Classic examples are Fenway Park in Boston, Wrigley Field, to some extent Camden Yards in Baltimore.  See this discussion ("Sadly, DC won't show so well during the Baseball All-Star Game,") concerning Nationals Stadium.

Stadium/Arena Design

• is the facility a throwback design or decidedly modern?  Arguably, classic designs for stadiums work better for cities (see City Baseball Magic--Plain Talk and Uncommon Sense about Cities and Baseball Parks by Philip Bess).  The foremost example of this is the design for Camden Yards in Baltimore ("Camden Yards, the stadium that changed baseball and Baltimore, turns 20," Baltimore Sun, "Camden Yards paved a retro revolution — and influenced Wrigley Field's renovations," Chicago Tribune).  Interestingly, Smith's Ballpark for the Salt Lake Bees is the pre-eminent example of a classic design in the minor leagues.  By contrast, the Washington Nationals stadium is modern.
• is the external design attractive?  
• design of the facility to accommodate non-sports events without compromise: at the opening of the new arena in Milwaukee, the then architecture critic ("Fiserv Forum's architecture wonderful inside, flawed outside") and the music critic ("The Killers, Violent Femmes rock first Fiserv Forum show, cover 'Laverne & Shirley' song") for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wrote great articles evaluating the success of the arena in interior design for multiple uses
• sustainability: new facilities are being built with net zero objectives, composting, use of re-usable items in concessions, not using natural gas as an energy source, etc.

Ancillary Development

• a publicly produced and robust master plan which isn't a "bag job" produced by sports team interests, with the aim of sparking additional development, leveraging the stadium/arena as a neighborhood and community anchor;
• ownership split concerning ancillary development around the facility: is it all controlled by the team?  Again, the White Sox Stadium is a good example of failures in this dimension.

The Georgetown Hoyas play their games at Capital One Arena, which is also home to the Washington Wizards basketball and Washington Capitals hockey teams, maximizing facility utilization.

Programming

• frequency of events held by the primary tenant--baseball has 82 home games/year, football about 10 including pre-season, basketball and hockey have 41, soccer about 17--so football stadiums are very rarely used (according to the Chicago Sun-Times article "Emanuel mulling 5,000-seat expansion to Soldier Field," the facility holds about 22 events including annually, 12 non-football events);
• how many teams use the facility, maximizing use and utility of the building--for example, Capital One Arena in DC is used by professional men's basketball, hockey, and one college basketball team for more than 100 sports events each year (until recently it also hosted professional women's basketball and Arena football).  Pittsburgh's Heinz Stadium is home not only to the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, but also the University of Pittsburgh's football team, which is one of seven college football teams to share the stadium of a professional team ("Stadiums Shared by NFL and NCAA Teams").
• are events scheduled in a manner that facilitates attendee patronage of off-site businesses--a business isn't an anchor if it aims to not share its customers; the earlier events are scheduled, the harder it is to patronize retailers and restaurants located off-site, at night during the week, there is limited post-game spending as well, on the weekends it's a different story with more opportunity to patronize off-site establishments--teams manipulate scheduling to reduce spending outside of their on-site and 100% controlled facilities;
• use of the facility for non-game events drawing additional patrons--such as concerts and other types of programming; 
• regular economic impact studies of spending by event patrons should be required (one example is a study that was conducted for Barclays Center in Brooklyn in 2013, as discussed in this blog entry from the Atlantic Yards Report, also see "Barclays Center and its economic impact on Brooklyn," Nathan Weiser blog, "The Barclays Effect," Politico), including more fine grained data on the effect on local business and local businesses (for example, the original study on Barclays found differences in patronage before and after events, and during the week versus weekends).

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

Broader retail is tough.  Note that except for team-related merchandise, increasingly patrons are less interested in retail consumption outside of food and beverage and other entertainment.  This makes it difficult to support straight up retail as part of professional sports team venue-focused revitalization initiatives.  

In It's Hardly Sportin' the authors describe how the Wrigleyville commercial district was "reproduced" towards food and drink and entertainment in response to the Cubs shifting to night games.

Transportation

• how people travel to events: automobiles vs. transit--if automobiles are the primary way people get to events, then large amounts of parking usually in surface lots needs to be provided, making it difficult to foster ancillary development because of lack of land and poor quality of the visual environment, whereas if transit is the primary mode, then more land around a facility can be developed in ways that leverage the proximity of the arena. 
• locating stadiums and arenas in high-capacity transit locations: e.g., Madison Square Garden, Barclays Center, and Capital One Arena are served by multiple transit lines, whereas most stadiums and arenas are sited in locations that have single line transit service.
• transit capacity: subway transit has much greater capacity than light rail, and depending on the schedule, railroad passenger service.  Buses have less capacity too, but depending on the nature of the event, many can be deployed.  Promising high quality service when transit modes lack the throughput and capacity to deliver (e.g., World Cup soccer in Dallas, Super Bowl at Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey) creates serious problems.
• transportation demand management requirements as part of the contract/certificate of occupancy/use permit: some teams have TDM plan requirements, in particular the Chicago Cubs, most don't. Some teams provide a great deal of information or support for sustainable mobility, most don't.  Some teams pay for transit services.  At least some of the time (the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals) sports teams may pay toward service extended beyond normal hours when games go late, most don't (Washington Nationals).  More sports facilities in cities are adding bike valets and/or secure bike parking facilities.

Slide from a study on the Barclays Center arena, Brooklyn, 2013

• Free transit with ticket:  Events at the Talking Stick Arena (Phoenix), Chase Center (San Francisco), Climate Pledge Arena (Seattle), and sports events at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City include certain types of free transit access for ticket holders. University of Utah and the Climate Pledge Arena have the most extensive agreements.  Through funding from teams and landowners, the transit station serving Pittsburgh baseball and football stadiums is included in the light rail transit system's "free fare zone," called the North Shore Connector. While it wasn't put into practice, in 2014 in negotiations for a new arena, the transit authority in Sacramento proposed providing Sacramento Kings ticket holders with "free transit" in return for certain subsidies. 
• transportation demand management plans should set targets for each mode, with a focus on trips by sustainable mobility.  This was an element of the contract with the Barclays Center (Brooklyn Nets).
• transportation demand management plans should require annual surveying on how people get to events to measure the success of shifting trips to sustainable modes: do fans arrive on foot; by bike; car--gas or electric; car pool; taxi/ride hailing; bus; light rail; etc. (This is an element of the contract with the Climate Pledge Arena/Seattle Kraken hockey team.)

Commuting statistics collected by a local business in Portland, Oregon

• secure bike parking facilities should be required for in-city sports facilities.
• special marketing initiatives. Some passenger rail lines provide special game day service for sports events and a wide range of marketing programs (Metrolink, Caltrain, New York MTA).  
• parking taxes to support community improvements: years ago a neighborhood association in the Hill District of Pittsburgh suggested creating a parking tax that would go towards funding local community projects as a mitigation program ("A dollar a car for the Hill," Hill District Consensus Group).   A parking tax should be assessed in any case.  (Similarly, the BART system has an add on fee for airport trips.)

New York City's arenas and to some extent some baseball stadiums, the Capital One Arena in DC, Wrigley Field in Chicago, and Oracle Park in San Francisco are particularly noteworthy examples of sports facilities well connected by transit, where a majority of attendees get to and from the facility on transit.

As mentioned, some sports teams (and other groups) have paid towards transit stations serving their facilities.  Newer agreements include the New England Patriots ("Commuter rail service to Foxboro to start in October," Quincy Patriot-Ledger, and the New York Islanders ("Islanders arena project at Belmont Park now includes new LIRR station," Newsday).

City-wide Benefits 

• community benefits agreements that provide additional benefits to the city overall
• fair lease terms rather than agreements where the team pays little or no rent.  For example, the City of Anaheim has made little net revenue--$50,000/year!--from the Anaheim Angels baseball team ("Stadium maintenance, debt eat into Anaheim's revenue from hosting Angels baseball," Orange County Register) which is why admissions and other taxes can be especially important.
• profit percentage paid to the local/state governments upon the sale of the team, in recognition of the importance of government funding for the facility and/or support infrastructure (like what was intended for the Miami Marlins stadium) as well as the reality that the facility is the platform for the success of the entire enterprise
• entrepreneurship and social enterprise opportunities.  Are there programs to support small business operation of concessions and contracting?  Can workforce development and social enterprises be a part of this mix? For example, the West Nest concessions stand in Mercedes-Benz Stadium is operated as a social enterprise by the Westside Works community organization ("At Mercedes-Benz Stadium, West Nest provides a training ground for Westside Works students and grads," Atlanta Magazine).
• public facilities access and use program, such as how the basketball arena in Bilbao includes a recreation center open to the public, including access to the main court when not in use; while not on-site, the Redskins football team did pay towards a community and recreation center in the area of the stadium
• admissions taxes on tickets: Prince George's County would make almost zero off the Washington Redskins if it weren't for an admissions tax on each ticket; but many teams argue against imposing such taxes or that they should be the beneficiaries, e.g., the Washington Wizards used admissions tax receipts to pay for interior improvements, "Verizon Center Ticket Tax to Rise to 10%," Washington Post, 2007.
• as discussed in the previous section, paying towards transit and transportation facilities is another city-wide benefit.
• conditional use permits as opposed to permanent certificates of occupancy.  Providing stadium/arena use permits for a specific period of time, rather than "forever" gives the locality more leverage.  New York City's treatment of Madison Square Garden is somewhat unique in that the facility is permitted through a special use permit  that isn't granted in perpetuity but has to be regularly updated, renegotiated and approved every ten years ("Remember, City Council, Forever Is a Really Long Time," New York Times). 
• Other tax revenues.  For example, with regard to taxes, as a proto-state, DC keeps the sales, income, and property tax revenue streams associated with real estate development and appreciation and the spending and obligations of residents.  On the other hand, unlike other "states," DC is barred from taxing "day of game" income of professional athletes, a revenue stream enjoyed everywhere else. 

West Nest concession stand at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta

Neighborhood benefits

• development and maintenance of a community plan, focused on neighborhood revitalization in association with the creation of the sports facility.  One example is the plan created for the Aycock neighborhood of Greensboro, North Carolina.  Other examples include plans associated with the development of minor league baseball stadiums in Memphis and Louisville, Kentucky, although these were more focused on downtown revitalization.
• neighborhood focused community benefits agreements.  The Atlanta Falcons football stadium was developed with such an agreement ("Building a Stadium, Rebuilding a Neighborhood," New York Times, Falcons community impact website) which included job training, employment targets, the creation of social enterprises, etc., although there is criticism of the program.
• creation of an implementation organization to guide neighborhood improvements.
• creation of "community safety partnerships" if necessary ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 ")
• parking taxes to support community improvements (discussed above): years ago a neighborhood association in the Hill District of Pittsburgh suggested creating a parking tax that would go towards funding local community projects as a mitigation program ("A dollar a car for the Hill," Hill District Consensus Group)
• admissions taxes: (discussed above).  A portion of admissions taxes could be designated for neighborhood improvement programs if stadiums/arenas are located outside of Downtown.
• public facilities access and use program (repeated from above).  One example is how the basketball arena in Bilbao includes a recreation center open to the public, including access to the main court when not in use; while not on-site, the Redskins football team did pay towards a community and recreation center in the area of the stadium.

Note that there are plenty of examples of the construction of stadiums and arenas at the loss of viable neighborhoods, such as Pittsburgh's Hill District and the creation of the arena for the Penguins hockey team in the late 1950s.  

The arena was demolished a few years ago, and a "restorative revitalization" initiative is underway ("Penguins ‘restorative development’ project aims to repair Pittsburgh’s famed Hill District," The Undefeated, "Not over in the Hill: Neighborhood leaders say the Penguins are coming up short," PublicSource).