Camden Yards baseball stadium is 30 years old

The Ringer has an excellent article, "The Baseball Stadium That “Forever Changed” Professional Sports," assessing the contribution of Camden Yards--a throwback designed baseball stadium which opened in 1992--to baseball, other professional sports, and cities.

 Camden Yards in 2003.  Getty Images photo.

It makes excellent points:

-- that the throwback "design" hasn't been a special success economically (although I prefer it myself) or in terms of revitalization

-- but it has helped to draw teams back to center city locations (although there are still exceptions, like the Atlanta Braves, and football teams)

-- but that somewhat unrecognized, Camden Yards is also responsible for ushering in a new era of public subsidy, taking of advantage of perceived urban negatives and the uncertainties present in "declining cities" where teams were considering leaving (and Baltimore's Colts football team had decamped to Indianapolis in 1984, making Baltimore feel particularly vulnerable) which was then seized upon by other sports teams and has cost cities, counties and states many billions of dollars.

-- relatedly that governments tended to take on the responsibility for maintenance, charged low rents, and shared very little in the way of concession and other revenues, making certain annual losses "on the investment"

The article makes the point that baseball stadiums up through WW2 were key civic facilities, and afterwards not so much.  

I think wrt that, the issue is twofold.  First, as "center cities" were supplanted by "metropolitan areas" and suburbanization, civic facilities in the city became less important generally, and team owners were "chasing" their fans and relocating to the suburbs.

But second, and perhaps more importantly, with the rise of television and other entertainments, and vacation and leisure alternatives, baseball in particular became less central as an element of American society.  Why build a "civic cathedral" if baseball no longer held the same place of importance?

It also drills down a bit more on what makes stadiums marginally more economically successful, specifically the ability to spur significant private investment--and acknowledges that mostly it doesn't happen.

It also mentions a point I realized and have written about, that communities that snag the facility can benefit at the expense of the place that had it before, which is an element not captured in economic studies at the metropolitan scale of the impact of stadiums and arenas.  

Although it really depends, and in most instances it's a wash.  One exception is Capital One Arena in DC.  Also Barclays Center in Brooklyn (except NYC! so it's an outlier anyway).

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The most significant issue is how well the stadium or arena can be integrated into existing urban fabric, where it's placed in that context--central locations great, not central locations bad, and for larger cities, how well it is paired with transit.

Also see:

-- "Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities," 2021
-- "Seattle Kraken expansion hockey team sets new standard for transit benefits in transportation demand management: free transit with ticket," 2021
-- "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
-- "Proposal to build new basketball arena in Downtown Philadelphia ," 2022