Gillette Stadium Transportation Improvements

My suggestion, move Gillette Stadium to Fort Point taking the space over from the exiting Gillette Factory.
 
BronsonShore said:
It's 2026 and there are still people who think putting NFL stadiums in the urban core is a good idea... :rolleyes:
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Works great for Seattle and Atlanta, much better than putting it in the middle of nowhere with only one road in and out.
 
BronsonShore said:
It's 2026 and there are still people who think putting NFL stadiums in the urban core is a good idea... :rolleyes:
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tysmith95 said:
Works great for Seattle and Atlanta, much better than putting it in the middle of nowhere with only one road in and out.
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We can have the city versus suburbs debate for NFL stadiums forever, but even for a stadium within the Greater Boston suburbs, Foxborough is particularly inconveniently located. Gillette Stadium is only there today because the land was basically free in the late-1960s thanks to a donation from the Bay State Raceway. And if it were more conveniently located with better access (aka: "better") it wouldn't have been so cheap 50+ years ago to begin with. Pro football teams back then didn't have the resources they have today, so that's the best the team could pull off without public subsidies.

Every decision for stadium siting since then has been path dependence downstream from that.

There are dozens of spots across the Greater Boston suburbs with underused land (ahem, golf courses) that have way better highway and transit access than Foxboro.
 
My personal urban design preference is for stadiums to anchor shopping/recreational areas, similar to Patriot Place, but located just outside the urban core so the noise from games/concerts/events isn't disturbing residents. Bijlmer Arena in Amsterdam is a good example.

By this metric, the proposed location in Everett is pretty much perfect, as is a hypothetical Boston 2024 Widdett Stadium.
 
tysmith95 said:
Works great for Seattle and Atlanta, much better than putting it in the middle of nowhere with only one road in and out.
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"Works great" for whom? For the billionaire owners of the teams who want to be closer to their customer base? For sure. For the segment of fans who live in the city and who really want to shave off some commute time 8 Sundays a year? Yup, I guess. For the overall health of the city? Absolutely not. That land would be put to much better use if it was a place of housing, jobs, and vibrant street life -- you know, the things that make a city a city.
 
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BronsonShore said:
"Works great" for whom? For the billionaire owners of the teams who want to be closer to their customer base? For sure. For the segment of fans who live in the city and who really want to shave off some commute time 8 Sundays a year? Yup, I guess. For the overall health of the city? Absolutely not. That land would be put to much better use if it was a place of housing, jobs, and vibrant street life -- you know, the things that make a city a city.
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l agree with your points. But then I think of Fenway Park, and how it adds to the city and to the life of the surrounding neighborhood. But Fenway Park has a much smaller footprint than the new stadiums of today, so the comparison is not a good one.
 
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Charlie_mta said:
I fu

l agree with your points. But then I think of Fenway Park, and how it adds to the city and to the life of the surrounding neighborhood. But Fenway Park has a much smaller footprint than the new stadiums of today, so the comparison is not a good one.
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I think the general consensus is that baseball/basketball/hockey (especially when combined like TD Garden) can work in and even enliven the urban fabric because of how frequently the space is used whereas a football stadium is, at best, a couple dozen times a year between games and concerts. I happened to be in Minneapolis and staying near the target center while both the Timberwolves and the Wild were in the playoffs back in May and it was awesome.
 
Charlie_mta said:
l agree with your points. But then I think of Fenway Park, and how it adds to the city and to the life of the surrounding neighborhood. But Fenway Park has a much smaller footprint than the new stadiums of today, so the comparison is not a good one.
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Fenway is old enough that the neighborhood grew around (and because of!) it (see MapJunction). You can't compare that to trying to build a stadium with twice the capacity in an already densely populated area. I'm sure someone will "well actually..." with this, but I struggle to think of an NFL stadium built near a downtown core that isn't either surrounded by acres of parking or is on the footprint of another stadium that had been there for decades already.

(Also, I think baseball stadiums have inherent advantages that football stadiums don't have that are better for cities overall. They are, generally, smaller; they are used far more often, and for a longer part of the year; and there is not a tailgating culture associated with it.)

Gillette is fine where it is. I think the interchange between Rt. 1 and 95 north of the stadium needs to be looked at, the 3-4 lanes exiting the stadium drop to 1 to go through the ramp complex, and that means even when you get out of the lot you're sitting for another hour before getting to the choke point. Maybe they need to look at remote lots with dedicated shuttles for game day to decentralize parking. For example, you could push more cars down to Plainville right off 495, then run shuttle trams up a dedicated lane or roadway, similar to how NASCAR tracks use trams (NHMS, for example). That would also, by nature, slow the crush of cars leaving the lot, since fans would be coming more in waves than a constant flow.
 
KCasiglio said:
I think the general consensus is that baseball/basketball/hockey (especially when combined like TD Garden) can work in and even enliven the urban fabric because of how frequently the space is used whereas a football stadium is, at best, a couple dozen times a year between games and concerts. I happened to be in Minneapolis and staying near the target center while both the Timberwolves and the Wild were in the playoffs back in May and it was awesome.
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Also tailgating is a big part of football culture in America. So unless you allocate even more valuable urban space to parking lots, you cut off that aspect as well in the urban location.
 
KCasiglio said:
I think the general consensus is that baseball/basketball/hockey (especially when combined like TD Garden) can work in and even enliven the urban fabric because of how frequently the space is used whereas a football stadium is, at best, a couple dozen times a year between games and concerts. I happened to be in Minneapolis and staying near the target center while both the Timberwolves and the Wild were in the playoffs back in May and it was awesome.
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Minneapolis is actually a poor example of that because the Wild play in their own building in nearby St. Paul! But, yes, when shared NBA and NHL arenas keep people coming into the city just about every evening in the wintertime.
 
Arenacale said:
Minneapolis is actually a poor example of that because the Wild play in their own building in nearby St. Paul! But, yes, when shared NBA and NHL arenas keep people coming into the city just about every evening in the wintertime.
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Touche! Also funnily I was just about to "well actually" your other post with Minneapolis as the example lol. No sea of (surface) parking
 
NFL is a uniquely horrible sport from a land utilization perspective. The venues are enormous. There are so few games per year (~20). They are heavily skewed away from mass transit usage, either from a cultural standpoint of the fan base or from the practicality of their locations.
 
Arenacale said:
Minneapolis is actually a poor example of that because the Wild play in their own building in nearby St. Paul! But, yes, when shared NBA and NHL arenas keep people coming into the city just about every evening in the wintertime.
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I was gonna say, the Dome Teams probably get good use of it in the Winter for Non-Football purposes... Minny especially.
 
jklo said:
I was gonna say, the Dome Teams probably get good use of it in the Winter for Non-Football purposes... Minny especially.
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That is true. Until Monster Jam expanded their schedule into the summer months in the 2010s, I was eternally jealous that the Metrodome, Hoosier Dome, and Silverdome all got wintertime stadium monster truck shows, while we were stuck with the dinky little Centrum. Those also usually came with a Supercross the weekend before or after, so they could keep the dirt in the building.

The Silverdome actually had it even better back then, because the Pistons played there for a number of years before the Palace of Auburn Hills was built. Unfortunately, of course, the Silverdome was out in suburbia surrounded by parking lots, and when the Palace was built it was even further out in the 'burbs (why they never just played in Joe Louis Arena I'll never understand). Things are much better now for Detroit - Ford Field was the "well actually" that sprung to mind from my post, it and Comerica Park are right next door to each other on the edge of downtown, and finally the Pistons and Red Wings share a modern building not far away.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Also tailgating is a big part of football culture in America. So unless you allocate even more valuable urban space to parking lots, you cut off that aspect as well in the urban location.
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FWIW, NFL owners are shrewd business people who are far from oblivious as to the economics of land use. Tailgating really doesn't make the owners any money (people bring their own food and drinks and entertainment, etc.) and parking revenue is negligible in the big picture (parking at Gillette is free for a decent portion of the lots). Teams would much rather not devote as much land to parking lots / tailgating space as they feel they need to.

This is why you increasingly see developments à la "Patriot Place" sprouting up around NFL stadiums on team-controlled land. I guarantee you that the rent from the tenants in all those buildings far exceeds the parking revenue the Kraft Group could get from the same ground area square footage, and that rent comes 12 months a year. If Bob Kraft could have his way he'd love the ability to replace even more Gillette parking lot space with retail / office / medical / hotel buildouts. This is exactly what Fenway Sports Group is doing with the (few) parking lots they own out of their (substantial) land holdings around Fenway Park, and that's for a venue that has sell-out events 100+ times a year.

Kraft would also love all-day high-capacity frequent train service to Foxboro station, as that would allow him to move more of his property up the land use value chain.

So yeah - big parking lots are seen as a necessary evil and not a desired land use to both urbanist and NFL owners alike.
 
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Arenacale said:
That is true. Until Monster Jam expanded their schedule into the summer months in the 2010s, I was eternally jealous that the Metrodome, Hoosier Dome, and Silverdome all got wintertime stadium monster truck shows, while we were stuck with the dinky little Centrum. Those also usually came with a Supercross the weekend before or after, so they could keep the dirt in the building.

The Silverdome actually had it even better back then, because the Pistons played there for a number of years before the Palace of Auburn Hills was built. Unfortunately, of course, the Silverdome was out in suburbia surrounded by parking lots, and when the Palace was built it was even further out in the 'burbs (why they never just played in Joe Louis Arena I'll never understand). Things are much better now for Detroit - Ford Field was the "well actually" that sprung to mind from my post, it and Comerica Park are right next door to each other on the edge of downtown, and finally the Pistons and Red Wings share a modern building not far away.
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I used to love the supercross races at the silverdome because it was the one race where they had the track go into the stands. They really have never done it the same way anywhere since. At monster cup theyd have a corner go into the stands but the silverdome had a full rythm section going up and back down. Cool as hell.
 
stick n move said:
I used to love the supercross races at the silverdome because it was the one race where they had the track go into the stands. They really have never done it the same way anywhere since. At monster cup theyd have a corner go into the stands but the silverdome had a full rythm section going up and back down. Cool as hell.
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The best was when the LA Coliseum hosted Supercross and Stadium Off-Road as a kid, and they used the full peristyle section at the east end of the stadium. Up, through the columns, and back down. Feld's been doing into-the-stands stuff for the Monster Jam World Finals, but those are one-off marquee events and they haven't really bothered to bring it back for Supercross. Gillette has the, er, promenade into the stadium that they could easily use for SX, but they've never done so, and instead just park the heavy equipment there.
 
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