Are they crazy?
Seventy-one games a year. Four hours a game, including pedestrian commute time. The rest of the time, the stadium will be dark. Bars and restaurants will have to make their nut on the shoulders of those rare opportunities. What restaurateur will take a chance like that?
And I thought that baseball games were to drink beer and eat hot dogs. Why would anyone go to a bar or restaurant after the game?
Bars and restaurants near stadiums make their money on people avoiding traffic jams. If the city wants to stimulate those kinds of businesses in downtown, they should close the freeway from 5 to 7. Problem solved.
Let me know if I can be of any more help.
Rich, they truly are crazy. The 3 main tenets for quality of life are Being, Belonging, and Becoming. How does sitting on your ass and drinking overpriced beer or soft drinks, and scarfing down crappy ballpark food while watching sub par baseball relate to quality of life? A worthwhile campaign for our city pertaining to quality of life should equate to activities that get us out and moving, participating, learning…not bowing down to sports “personalities” (of which there will be few with this caliber of team).
The city agrees to tear down the city hall building without knowing where it will move its operations and without knowing how much it will cost just for the sake of making room for a baseball stadium to house Mr. Hunt and Mr. Foster’s baseball team. Gee, I wonder if they would do the same thing for me. Do you think Joyce Wilson will tear down the Cielo Vista Library to make room for the grocery store I want to bring to east El Paso?