The Exploding City

It was inevitable, another guest editorial against baseball in Shockoe Bottom. There's is an artificial divide of sorts, the passionate dreamers who want to bring baseball back to Richmond's historic center and the cool number crunchers who question their motives and view baseball as distraction that should be located wherever it can be most conveniently forgotten. After all the Braves have relocated in faraway Gwinnett County, an exurb of Atlanta. Great freeway access, plenty of parking and near the Mall of Georgia, everything that makes America great.




George Nyfeler prioritizes and analyzes, in a guest editorial in today's RTD. It turns out Style Weekly has no franchise on the Stop Shockoe movement. Michael Paul Williams has written several features on why baseball is impractical and inappropriate for Shockoe Bottom, the local Sierra Club has come out against it and even ACORN (the Association to Conserve Old Richmond Neighborhoods) has objected. Each makes its own arguments, but taking shape is a coalition of bloggers, preservationists and cynics eager to stop the Highwood Development. The arguments run as follows:

• Baseball is stupid. (so twentieth century)


• No one will come after the novelty wears off.


• Suburbanites will never come.


• The Bottom is

1. too dangerous


2. too historically sensitive


3. in a flood plain


4. has no parking


5. not accessible

I'll deal with these in turn, but George Nyfeler makes the broader point that baseball in Shockoe Bottom is bad for Richmond as as region. At least he is up front about his views that Richmonders near and far would be better served by a stadium conveniently located away from the city, maybe near Short Pump, King's Dominion or even Colonial Downs, the perfect example of taking a historic venue and giving all the ambiance of a freeway rest stop without all those insignificant ancillary benefits like increased tourism, business, and redevelopment of a currently undevelopable piece of land. A Colonial Downs ballpark makes perfect sense to a big box, mall/sprawl set of values. Lots of parking, freeway access, friendly development rules, no historical considerations and complete control over your environment.




Years ago the Kansas City Royals made the ultimate move from a Fort Myer's spring training facility to a baseball theme park near Orlando. This Disneyfication of baseball proved to be too colossally stupid and sterile for everyone. There was no community to support the park in a park and tourists drove straight past it to bigger and even lesson authentic venues, like the Magic Kingdom and Sea World. This should be an object less. The baseball theme park died a slow and unmourned death. Today the Royals train in retirement capital Sun City Arizona.




I use the Royals and Kansas City as an example of how not to do sports facilities, downtown development and urban renewal. Within the space of two decades, K.C. pulled its baseball stadium out of a cozy urban community, shot it out halfway to Independence along with the Kansas City Chiefs. It rests comfortably nearby I-70 with its own 4 leaf clover interchange. State of the art football and baseball stadiums sit side by side in a sea of assphalt (my spelling), parking revenue rolls in and a small army of flashlight waving kids direct you to your parking spot. Game over provides the same easy freeway ramp and a race home to catch the highlights on the evening news. Kaufman Stadium is the perfect example of what is wrong with rest stop ballparks. All money flowing into the stadium, stays in the stadium. There is no nearby development except for a few hotels. This is sad, because Kansas City supports its sports teams. The Chiefs and the Royals are consistent draws, but are cut off from the greater community. Travelers on I70 get a wide angle view of both stadiums 10 miles before they reach downtown. A website brags " one of few stadiums I have visited where traffic leaving the stadium isn't a massive burden"




This is just a long string of development mistakes Kansas City has made.
Count 'em:

1. Downtown Airport abandoned (virtually) and rebuilt as Kansas City International 20 miles from downtown. You used to be able to sit on Quality Hill near the Hereford Bull and wave at the passengers as the planes took off. Meanwhile they got a bird's eye view of one of Kansas City's famous landmarks, the AHA Bull.
   
   
   Now KCI is a short $40 cab ride away, even farther from south KC.
   




2. Move your basketball arena from an old art deco era building to the stockyards, two miles and a world away with an odor all its own. It only makes sense if you are a rodeo fan, which comes once a year. The former Kansas City Kings are now the Kings of Sacremento.
   
   

   The view from the Bull.

3. The Union Station went the way of most train stations and like Richmond is home to a 1st class Science Museum.
   
4. The worst school system in the State which like Richmond has been segregated from the better suburban schools. Unlike Richmond, it spent 150 million in 1980 dollars in a court ordered building campaign that included Latin and Greek only experimental schools. ADA did not exist then, but this massive experiment in urban education resulted in a recent State takeover due to poor test scores. Money doesn't solve everything. The ADA would have ensured equal access to these miserable schools.
   
5. Streetcars vanished there like most everywhere else. My better half rode the last trip on the last street car, although she claims she was two years old at the time. Street cars that would take you to the Plaza on Brush Creek, Loose Park, downtown department stores, theatres and sports arenas.. They showed all the wisdom of the rest of the country in burning their transit bridges behind them.

Part II - Stacking the Deck