“Developers hate uncertainty, but now we know there will be a stadium on the site,” said Hanson-Willis, “and we’re confident that development will follow.”
Clearly, there’s plenty of room. A scan of the area reveals at least 40 potential building sites — all of them on surface parking lots — within a six-block radius of the new stadium. (Five pivotal blocks are owned by the Star Tribune.)
Even so, the project could falter if conflicts persist among the Vikings and their government partners. The dustup over seat licenses is just one example.
Consider the budget as a whole. By NFL standards, $975 million is not a lot of money for a covered stadium. The 49ers new open-air home in Santa Clara, Calif., is expected to cost $1.2 billion by the time it opens in 2014. Recently built stadiums for the Giants/Jets (open-air) and Cowboys (retractable roof) cost $1.6 billion and $1.2 billion respectively. Apportioning costs between the building itself and its immediate surroundings is another likely point of tension.
Adding to the problem are the state’s overly restrictive rules on urban redevelopment. In most states, Minneapolis could finance new streetscapes, lighting, landscaping and other enhancements near the stadium by borrowing against the expected higher property tax revenues that those enhancements produce. Minnesota law discourages the practice. Moreover, its tax laws may have the perverse effect of making surface parking lots near the stadium more attractive as surface lots than as new homes and offices. If so, legislative attention might be needed for a first-rate project to emerge.
Despite those barriers, the team, the stadium authority and the architects are getting plenty of advice on how to proceed. Aside from ideas gathered from citizens around the state, a talented 25-member implementation committee issued last month an impressive set of guidelines.
“We’re determined not to repeat the Metrodome’s mistake of creating a district that’s a ‘no man’s land’ except on game day,” said the committee’s cochair, Thomas Fisher, dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota.
On the committee’s wish list: a bold, transparent building with a “retractable feature” and plenty of windows; entrances that match the current grid of streets; primary orientation toward a plaza and the downtown skyline; a design that attracts a dense, mixed-use development on adjoining blocks; a use of sustainable building materials, and an emphasis on public transit.
“If we do this right, people will want to live and work in this area,” Fisher said. “My personal view is that this should be a dense urban district with development right up to the light-rail station across from the new stadium.”
Fisher and his cochair David Wilson, managing director of Accenture’s Minneapolis office, are on the right track. The key word for a successful stadium is livability. Yes, the building must be functional, perhaps even beautiful. But above all it should express itself on a human scale at street level. It should become a creature of its new surroundings.
The stadium’s plaza, for example, should be modest in size. The three-block expanse depicted in early drawings could easily become desolate and windswept for 330 days a year. Better to encourage clusters of new, mixed-use buildings around a smaller plaza to create a lively stadium district. Tree-lined streets with diagonal parking could be closed off on game day to create a pedestrian zone that accommodates both on-street tailgating and “railgating” (food trucks along 5th Street) for transit riders.
Such a district would attract fans not necessarily attending the game but wanting a game-day experience. “Our biggest competitor is HDTV,” said Lester Bagley, Vikings vice president, who anticipates a festival atmosphere outside the stadium — including, perhaps, a large screen to show the game.
While many fans are hoping for a retractable roof, there may be better (and more artful) ways to spend construction dollars. Movable roofs on football stadiums tend to be more like sunroofs than convertible tops. A better idea is a giant movable window that opens the stadium to a green plaza, a new transit station, a stadium district and the city beyond.
It is, after all, a lively stadium district that holds the key to success. Repeating the Metrodome mistake is not an option.
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Steve Berg, author of “Target Field: The New Home of the Minnesota Twins,” writes about urban design issues.
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