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December 10, 2006
Stadiums/Arenas Are Profitable...but to Whom?
Don't Worry It's Just Reality: Brooklyn Edition gets in on the Gehry bashing weekend as well. Gehry must be feeling the heat like he's walking on the sidewalk in front of the Disney Concert Hall.
There are two trends in the sports industry that make building an arena in Brooklyn a bad idea:
a. franchises have little or no loyalty to existing fans - with the exception of places like Green Bay, owners use the threat to leave as a bargaining chip, and they frequently do leave.
b. because of this arenas and stadiums have much shorter life cycles -because those who use them don't have to pay for them. So it's not unlikely, in fact, it might even be expected that an arena over Vanderbilt yards would be an abandoned, ugly, impractical (the definition of a Gehry work) eyesore within ten years...and that will really be blight.
Posted by amy at December 10, 2006 8:06 PM