Paulie Walnuts
Well-known member
Malls are dying all over . Locally Triangle Town Center is not doing well. Northgate in Durham is in bad shape and probably won't survive.
NCFC MLS bid/General Soccer Bizzo
- Thread starter Paulie Walnuts
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Malls are dying, but most municipalities seem to hang on to at least one of the beasts. Head to Crabtree an hour before opening if you want to see a literal herd of retired people power walking. It's terrifying, yet impressive.
Paulie Walnuts
Well-known member
from reports Crabtree is doing fine financially and so is Southpoint. It does seem like most cities now will end up with just 1 mall which is not good news for Triangle Town Center.
The MLS is now officially going to Charlotte. The team will join league play in 2021, but no name was announced today. Note that the club is starting from scratch and is not currently affiliated with the Charlotte Independence team that plays in the USL Championship along with NCFC. There's a chance that Tepper could buy that franchise, but since there's been no talk of that to date, it looks like he's going to build an organization from the ground up. Honestly, there's been no real advantage to coming into MLS with an existing lower level team in the last expansion phase so ... whatever.
Yeah ... I talked to an old friend who works for NCFC/Courage and the general idea is that they want to pursue the stadium project until the door is fully closed, even if it needs to be scaled down a bit. The general idea being that a proper stadium better connected to the city center could well serve as an east coast hub for women's pro soccer and the USWNT going forward. It's not a completely insane idea, but I don't think the funding will be there at the end of the day. It's just too hard a sell without an MLS franchise to at least drive conversation.
Another note on MLS ... Garber hinted at the pretty well accepted idea that Charlotte, as the 30th franchise, will cap this round of expansion and probably cap the league's total number of clubs all together. That's been widely assumed for awhile. The old, dormant Ottawa franchise was officially awarded to David Beckham's Miami franchise late last week, which dealt with the other piece of outstanding franchise business. Inter Miami FC are scheduled to begin play in 2020 and will play in Ft Lauderdale while they develop their permanent home near the airport in Miami ... supposedly. Everything about that club seems a bit hinky to me. Anyway, with Miami settled the league would be operating with 26 franchises, while the 4 expansion clubs join in 2021 (Charlotte and Austin FC) and 2022 (Sacramento Republic and St Louis). Of those 5 only Charlotte will be playing in a huge pro football stadium, as the others have soccer specific venues with capacities around 20K and change. Tepper dropped $300+ million on the expansion fee but he's got a LOT of butts to put in seats in a fairly short period of time if this thing is going to work in practice.
Another note on MLS ... Garber hinted at the pretty well accepted idea that Charlotte, as the 30th franchise, will cap this round of expansion and probably cap the league's total number of clubs all together. That's been widely assumed for awhile. The old, dormant Ottawa franchise was officially awarded to David Beckham's Miami franchise late last week, which dealt with the other piece of outstanding franchise business. Inter Miami FC are scheduled to begin play in 2020 and will play in Ft Lauderdale while they develop their permanent home near the airport in Miami ... supposedly. Everything about that club seems a bit hinky to me. Anyway, with Miami settled the league would be operating with 26 franchises, while the 4 expansion clubs join in 2021 (Charlotte and Austin FC) and 2022 (Sacramento Republic and St Louis). Of those 5 only Charlotte will be playing in a huge pro football stadium, as the others have soccer specific venues with capacities around 20K and change. Tepper dropped $300+ million on the expansion fee but he's got a LOT of butts to put in seats in a fairly short period of time if this thing is going to work in practice.
Paulie Walnuts
Well-known member
I read somewhere that NCFC owner Malik talked to Dundon at some point but nothing came of that. Dundon instead wasted money on the AAF.
Yeah ... Dundon was actually interested to a mild degree, but wasn't interested in sinking a lot of his own money into the project.
Paulie Walnuts
Well-known member
I think PNC got most of their funding OKd before Karmanos agreed to move the team right? But I could be wrong. I know PK provided some money.
The arena in Raleigh was fully funded at a much lower estimated cost prior to Karmanos announcing that the Whale would move to Raleigh. They had actually started site construction based on the original set of plans (slightly smaller facility with one ring of private boxes), which was quickly halted while the building was redesigned to accommodate a professional hockey franchise ... more offices, bigger ticket window area, changes to the bowl for logistics, ice making and support, the huge dehumidifying chiller and roof fans, two sets of primary locker rooms and the broadcasting infrastructure. While the design changes were being made the arena Authority roped in a bigger chunk of the entertainment and recreation tax and negotiated with Karmanos to pay around $60 million out of his own pocket. The cost of the project went from just short of $100 million to $158 million, so Karmanos basically carried the cost of the changes.
Paulie Walnuts
Well-known member
also when the additional PNC money was added by the city and county they added members to the Centennial authority board. Prior to those people being added the CA board was basically Wolfpack club members with a few token non NCSU people.
This is the board now according to the CA website:
http://centennialauthority.com/members/
This is the board now according to the CA website:
http://centennialauthority.com/members/
There was a shift in the focus of the authority once it became a bigger project with more interests represented. It was entirely appropriate that NC State and the State of NC provide the majority of the representation on the original authority board ... that's where the money was coming from and that board accurately represented the stakeholders. You make it sound like there was some sort of game being played when there wasn't.
cmaleski2
Well-known member
One concern with the proposed Cary Town Center update. That would leave the Triangle Aquatic Center with no parking overflow for bigger swim meets. My daughter is a swimmer and for the larger meets the overflow parking fills up hundreds of spaces in the mall lot. That is going to be a problem someone needs to address. She is a sophomore so she will be done swimming locally before that all happens, but still that is going to be an issue for sure.
Part of the land for Downtown South has been purchased, 88 acres of the 130 acres in the plan were purchased for $19.6 million.
Fun ...
Worth noting that they paid relatively low on the per acre scale, so those two parcels could be flipped if the whole thing goes south. Also worth noting that some of that land is classified as an Opportunity Zone, which offers a tax incentive for development. Something will end up happening there ... just not sure what.
Paulie Walnuts
Well-known member
if they somehow get money to build the stadium I would think they would have a decent shot at getting a MLS team . Maybe by relocation. Are there any MLS teams in financial trouble?
They could wait for the inevitable failure of David Beckham’s team in Miami. But stadium money is a chicken and egg thing, IMO. They won’t get money without a team and they won’t get a team without a stadium.
The Columbus Crew were going to relocate to Austin but the owner essentially traded ownership of the Crew for the rights to a new team in Austin. The Crew got new local ownership and the promise of a new stadium. That’s covered elsewhere in this thread.