New Downtown Baseball Stadium, AAA Club, and Associated RE Development

[ShockerFever]

It looks kinda bad but it's not as bad as the amount of people in this city that are against any sort of progression of it whatsoever. They literally want this place to be Dodge City.

[WstateU]

Oops, don't have Facebook, but the Instagram link takes me to the wrong place. Hmmm, that account was locked?

[ShockTalk]

Don't (Won't) do Instagram. I'm ?lucky? to use Facebook once in a while.

[WstateU]

Hey man, Wichita rocks!

[abdullah_sharif]

wichita lost its mojo back in the 80s.. call it globalization or whatever you want, but we have fallen from an important american city (gdp and average wage per capita) in the realm as charlotte, austin, and albuquerque... to now? we're behind des moines, okla city, and omaha..

our lost mojo has most to do with lack of employment diversity and educational attainment. if a city/region could has a very educated workforce, i suspect that recruiting companies (with or without subsidies) shouldn't be an issue.

[NCAABound]

I love our negative Nancy's in this city (in the comments section). They act like people are banging down the doors to relocate and do business in Wichita. In my company, we have an extremely hard time getting people to relocate here. They open up a position within the company and NOBODY requests to transfer here. Sometimes you have to accept that reality but some people just can't seem to get it.

[pogo]

In all fairness to the powers that were back in the day they were constrained by the amount of money available due to the length of the the tax levy. The money that was left over was placed into an account to help with needed future upgrades and maintenance. Thus far the powers that are have not asked for additional monies to upset those that were against it in the first place of which there were many. Not as great if more money had been available but still nothing to hang our heads in shame.

[Shockm]

Wasn't Eck Stadium built in 1999 or something? How much did it cost? What do those dollars inflate to? Doesn't Eck seat more than 6k? Am I missing the box offices in the city's rendering? Can't we directly compare costs for the two projects, Eck and this building? Maybe not, I dunno.

With the hill and outside bleachers hauled in, I think attendance into the 8500 range. That is not permanent seating though.

[WuShock16]

For accuracy's sake, there is NO WAY that Eck SEATS almost 8,000 (meaning permanent seating). The attendance for the Super Regional games against Cal-Irvine in 2007 was 8153, and that was when people were standing anywhere and everywhere that people could stand. The hill was full. The standing room area was full. For all I know, there were probably many, many people watching from inside the All-American Club.

That's what the mayor means when he mentions X-amount of permanent seating with other areas for gathering more people.

[WstateU]

I find myself agreeing with you again; please continue to keep the keyboard away from KCShox.

[Shox The Revenant]

Intrust Bank Arena was originally designed to be far grander than what we got. Budget and time constraints resulted in a reduced version of the original. Something tells me that this stadium is headed that way. Our dreams our major league but our execution is Independent/Single A level.

[WstateU]

Here’s an excerpt from the referenced article...

“By Kirk Seminoff / A group of Emerging Leaders, gathered for a roundtable discussion Friday, are underwhelmed with the renderings they see for the new Wichita baseball stadium. When it comes to big decisions and projects they want Wichita — and its leaders — to aspire to greatness, not settle.

That story leads off the Sunday 7, followed closely by a story with more information about the ballpark.”

[pogo]

Noticed an article in WBJ about “emerging leaders” not comfortable with the city being ok with average and not going for spectacular. Not sure who these emerging leaders are but I like the way they rhink

[ShockerFever]

I received the following response from Mayor Longwell:

[Rocky Mountain Shock],
Thank you and the design is very similar to concept
Minus the hotel and other buildings that will be included but focus is on baseball.
I appreciate all input from caring people. Thank you

Jeff Longwell
Sent from my iPhone


Short and mildly defensive, but I didn't expect much more considering I have less political clout than even an average voter. I was somewhat surprised I received a response at all.

At any rate, from this I get the feeling it will be difficult to force any design changes. Please continue to email, call, or write to the Mayor and other city leaders.

lol that was a nice thank you but **** off response.

What a joke.

[ShockerFever]

I’m not even sure this new stadium will be a more imposing and visually impressive structure than what we just tore down. The renderings point towards nope. That’s kinda depressing.

It will be newer, cleaner, more fan-friendly, etc... not making that silly argument.

I mean it appears we have taken the ped bridge and McLean work off of the table and out of the budget, and there are no land acquisition costs, so the $75M is purely going into the stadium itself, specifically. And we are going to end up with THAT? Talk about head-scratching. Are they setting the Hope Diamond in the first concrete pour or something?

It honestly is mind-boggling. It's like they just expect little ol' Wichita to be happy with anything and the $75 million was just an arbitrary number thrown out to impress people and that we would be satisfied because by golly gee whiz, it's a $75 million stadium; it has to be good.

Something is definitely fishy here. Like you said, no inflated land acquisition costs. And it seriously looks like a file pulled out from a standard filing cabinet. I think Tulsa built their stadium for like $40 million. It's nice and solid. I would say it compares to this rendition maybe even slightly better.. FOR NEARLY HALF THE PRICE.

They're seriously gonna **** this **** up. Why do we have the most ignorant, out-of-touch goobers always deciding what to do with millions of dollars in a basically once-in-a-lifetime type opportunity not to **** it up?

And they're supposed to break ground in February? So it tells me that this thing is already in ink. Sure they say they're open to feedback but they have less than a month to change anything. And they surely can't make sweeping changes in a month. So this is what's gonna happen.

This stadium design is worth no more than $40 million. There's some people that are gonna pocket millions of dollars in this deal is what I think.