TheLegend
Hardly Deactivated
LA in 1984 made $223 million. Primarily because they made use of existing venues.
Potential Atlanta NHL Expansion Team Thread
- Thread starter MMC
- Start date
LA in 1984 made $223 million. Primarily because they made use of existing venues.
KevFu
Registered User
Atlanta built stuff, but the stuff they built had a purpose beyond the Olympic games.
I.E. - The Olympic village turned Georgia State from a commuter school to having dorms for the first time. The Olympic Stadium was turned into MLB Turner Field for 20 years and now is the home football stadium of Georgia State.
I.E. - The Olympic village turned Georgia State from a commuter school to having dorms for the first time. The Olympic Stadium was turned into MLB Turner Field for 20 years and now is the home football stadium of Georgia State.
nhlfan79
Registered User
Beyond the sports venues (also note that the Aquatic Center at Georgia Tech is still in regular use), the biggest legacy is Centennial Park in the heart of downtown, which replaced one of the most dangerous and dilapidated neighborhoods anywhere. I remember leaving Atlanta Knights games at the Omni in the early 1990s and treating all stop lights on the way to the highway as mere suggestions.
Now, that area is literally the centerpiece of a major tourist destination, as it's surrounded by the World of Coke, the Civil Rights Museum, the College Football Hall of Fame, a silly giant ferris wheel, and the Georgia Aquarium, not to mention State Farm Arena, MBS, CNN Center, and the Georgia World Congress Center, and soon the Centennial Yards live-work-play development.
AZDesertKnight
Deactivated Coyotes Fan
I'd hope you of all people would understand how bad ownership and management can destroy a market.
AZDesertKnight
Deactivated Coyotes Fan
Because the real American Dream is grifting people of millions of dollars on promises of the future based on irrelevant statistics that creates unrealistic utopian pictures.
TheGreenTBer
the only language I speak is FAILURE
- Apr 30, 2021
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TheLegend
Hardly Deactivated
Yet here you both are… fans of teams who willingly contribute to their grift by buying tickets…. paying for whatever plan there is to watch their games…. buying their merchandise….. etc. etc…..
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s like the self-promoted “economist” who wrote a study about how bad public funded arenas are yet openly and enthusiastically supports a pro sports team that plays its home games in two publicly funded facilities.
TheGreenTBer
the only language I speak is FAILURE
- Apr 30, 2021
- 9,944
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Spare me the smarminess; I neither buy tickets/merchandise nor do I pay a cent to watch NHL games legitimately (when i do watch in the first place, which is pretty much only the playoffs).
Because if 10K people in Atlanta become hockey fans as a result of a team going there that's 10K new hockey fans. That's much better than putting a team in a market where there are a million hockey fans because they are already fans.
TheLegend
Hardly Deactivated
But you're still here.
You come in here with all sorts of quirky comments (I'll be more than happy to provide some of your examples) and want to be spared being called out for it?
AtlantaWhaler
Thrash/Preds/Sabres
- Jul 3, 2009
- 20,087
- 3,305
Because since the team moved just over a decade ago, Atlanta MSA has added 1.5 million in population and has added a lot of corporate money (Mercedes, Google, Microsoft, Norfolk Southern, State Farm, etc...)
TheLegend
Hardly Deactivated
Because someone saw how badly the first two were run and wants to make a go of it???
The WHA's Denver Spurs failed at McNichols Sports Arena and relocated to Ottawa.
Then the NHL's Colorado Rockies failed at McNichols Sports Arena and relocated to New Jersey.
Then, 13 years later, the Quebec Nordiques moved to the very same arena to become the Colorado Avalanche. They sold out their first 487 consecutive home games.
Not saying a third Atlanta team would be as successful as the Avalanche have been in Denver but you can't deny Denver was a twice-failed major league hockey market before they got here.
GreenHornet
Registered User
It's behind a paywall, but the AJC has an interview with Frank Ferreira, the newly-named head of development and operations for The Gathering At South Forsyth, who makes it clear that the people behind the proposed district want an NHL team for the arena.
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tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
Georgia State recently spent several years in the top-10 US universities for enrollment, peaking at #6.
I’m guessing a lot of folks are reading this and thinking we’re talking about Georgia Tech. No, Georgia State, a commuter school that was barely on the radar prior to the 90s.
Relevant to the topic of public investment in sports facilities — Georgia State purchased the former Turner Field baseball stadium, home of the Atlanta Braves, which was originally the Centennial Olympic Stadium where Muhammad Ali lit the flame to open the 1996 games. That same building is now Georgia State’s football stadium, a great example of how to repurpose and renovate an arena across multiple life cycles.
That’s how a city can do the Olympics properly. Georgia State will continue to contribute to the city as a large public university long after these sporting events are forgotten.
GreenHornet
Registered User
To clarify about the Olympic Village, GSU used it as dorms after the Olympics, but the buildings themselves were on Tech's campus in midtown (just across the street from Bobby Dodd Stadium on the site that Tech's old Techwood dorms were located).
Tech eventually bought the village and now uses the buildings as dorms, while GSU built its own dorms closer to its campus downtown.
That said, your overall point is still a valid one.
KevFu
Registered User
Thanks for the details, ATL folks! I knew Atlanta "did it right" but my examples were general instead of specific.
RoyalAir
Looks Better In Gold
As others have said, Atlanta did the Olympics correctly. The infrastructure built during that time period is still paying dividends, as the city/metro has absolutely exploded in the 20 years since.
Now, that comes at a cost, as the overall area changes with such a drastic influx of people out of region. Those of us who grew up there hardly recognize it any longer, which is a double-edged sword.
BKIslandersFan
F*** off
If the topic was about tax payers funding stadiums I am 100% with you.
Considering how many cities got a team back and are thriving, I don't buy this on this topic.
TheLegend
Hardly Deactivated
Both Atlanta (and LA) did it right by incorporating existing venues and building with solid plans for future usage in mind.
Nothing extraordinarily fancy or exotic (which tacks on tons of costs). They just built them to do the job needed.
You kind of have to look at the post I was quoting when I made that comment to see that I wasn't just talking about governments and tax payer spending. For sure it includes them but it's also the fans and the sponsors and in this case, the owners of the team who are being grifted here. It's a project that will eventually fail for a number of different reasons which I've written about before. I have little doubt that the project will move forward and get built, and I also have little doubt that they won't get an NHL team. But as I said above, the team will not be successful long term, and will be another stain on the NHL.
Also, how many teams have gotten their team back after losing it twice?
What makes Atlanta so different from any other market? Previous outcomes do not determine future results.
I'm starting to think all you Canadian naysayers are afraid of Atlanta coming back. When it's run well and perfectly viable, you won't have a high horse to sit on.
I'm generally critical of the "new sports facility" phenomenon writ large, not as a criticism of any one particular market. But that's besides the point of debating the NHL in Atlanta because the grift is just how it's done in 95% of the markets regardless of whether they're "traditional" or not. I'm as against excessively asking taxpayers to fund an arena in Calgary as I would be in <insert team of southern town, USA>.
More specifically re: the topic at hand: The "tried two times" narrative with this venture loses footing with me regardless of who was running the Flames/Thrashers when you realize just how different this location would be and that a NHL team would be the single major league tenant. It's not as dramatic as to say "this would be a whole new market." But I can't in any good conscience compare a franchise that shared a downtown arena with the Hawks in the 1970s and a franchise that shared a downtown arena with the Hawks in the oughts to a proposed franchise that would play 29 miles to the northeast in 2030s when the metro area writ large will likely have over seven million people.
That's not me saying it would or wouldn't work but just that it's not nearly the apples-to-apples comparison naysayers would have you think.
More specifically re: the topic at hand: The "tried two times" narrative with this venture loses footing with me regardless of who was running the Flames/Thrashers when you realize just how different this location would be and that a NHL team would be the single major league tenant. It's not as dramatic as to say "this would be a whole new market." But I can't in any good conscience compare a franchise that shared a downtown arena with the Hawks in the 1970s and a franchise that shared a downtown arena with the Hawks in the oughts to a proposed franchise that would play 29 miles to the northeast in 2030s when the metro area writ large will likely have over seven million people.
That's not me saying it would or wouldn't work but just that it's not nearly the apples-to-apples comparison naysayers would have you think.
