Nashville as MLB Expansion/Relocation Market

[Sean blackdog]

https://sportstalkflorida.com/mlb/the-non-existent-nashville-stars-continuing-to-push-for-an-mlb-expansion-team/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Nashville stadium on the opening day of the 2027 season.

[smeagolsfree]

12 hours ago, Sean blackdog said:

https://sportstalkflorida.com/mlb/the-non-existent-nashville-stars-continuing-to-push-for-an-mlb-expansion-team/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Nashville stadium on the opening day of the 2027 season.

It is more a dose of reality. It may not pan out the way these guys want it to happen. Number one they want a team here. Number two they want a team here under their conditions. Number three their conditions are that it will be minority owned, and it will not happen if that team is a relocation from another city. "MLB is not going to expand to 32 teams until the A’s and Rays get new ballparks." No movement on that front or is there, I don't know. Look how long it will take for the Titans to get the deal done and the Stars have not even started the process. My daddy told me one time when I said I wanted to go help him in the garden and I said I was, and he took his belt off and he said it "Ain't gonna happen" Well, that is my message to the Star's at this point in the game.

This thing is probably a lot longer than 4 years out. These folks need to keep on dreaming!

"The stadium situations and resolving them in Oakland and St. Petersburg have greater priority than adding two teams. Oakland Athletics owner John Fisher has been playing Oakland against Las Vegas in the stadium game. In the Tampa Bay area Rays’ ownership continues its quest to build a ballpark. Manfred has acknowledged that Las Vegas could be a Major League Baseball market. Nashville and Portland, Oregon have been active talking about getting an MLB franchise. Montréal seems to be in limbo at the moment. Loar and Music City Baseball keep hiring baseball people with the hope of getting an MLB team."

 

[Bos2Nash]

The Rays stadium situation may be progressing along. Hines (Reed District Master Developer) was selected alongside the Rays organization to redevelop Tropicana Field with a new stadium. Here is the article, but a google search for "hines and rays development" brings up several articles talking about the $4.9 billion investment. 

[markhollin]

No one will ever convince me otherwise that the Cumberland riverfront, just east of/and including the Nissan Stadium's footprint, would be t he perfect place for a major league ballpark in Nashville.  PNC Park in Pittsburgh consistently wins numerous 'Best Baseball Park in America' awards, partially because of its similar locale in the Steel City looking across the Allegheny River towards the Golden Triangle.
 

[Baronakim]

On 1/12/2023 at 12:52 PM, Luvemtall said:

Bos2Nash , all great talking points. After reading though all the expands, the next question is what does become of First Horizon Park if /when MLB comes to Nashville? With all the new construction of the ballpark village area , and Germantown itself, does it make more since to “rethink” “reuse” this venue and bring it to full MLB specs? 

Well they did change the old Sulphur Dell park over to stock car demolition derby.  Maybe they could do it again if a new MLB stadium gets built elsewhere.  Ha ha.

[jmtunafish]

The Bleacher Report yesterday ranked its top cities for MLB expansion.  They have Nashville ranked as #1.

1. Nashville
2. Charlotte
3. Montreal
4. Portland OR
5. Salt Lake City
6. Vancouver
7. Mexico City

I particularly like the picture of Nashville's skyline that headlines the article.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10074381-ranking-the-7-most-likely-destinations-for-mlbs-next-city-after-as-to-vegas-move

[PaulChinetti]

That is a very cool picture. Made me do a double take on what city it was. 

[nashville born]

The other one wasn't terrible either.  New perspective but doesn't show an accurate depiction of downtown's scope.

[lmc123]

14 hours ago, PaulChinetti said:

That is a very cool picture. Made me do a double take on what city it was. 

If only we had the wharf!

[Sean blackdog]

https://theathletic.com/4622504/2023/06/20/mlb-player-poll-expansion-nashville/

[Argo]

28 minutes ago, Sean blackdog said:

https://theathletic.com/4622504/2023/06/20/mlb-player-poll-expansion-nashville/

Wha... Whaaaa???? Not Charlotte. Whaaaa? 

Edited June 20, 2023 by Argo

[Jarno6006]

On 5/4/2023 at 5:41 PM, jmtunafish said:

The Bleacher Report yesterday ranked its top cities for MLB expansion.  They have Nashville ranked as #1.

1. Nashville
2. Charlotte
3. Montreal
4. Portland OR
5. Salt Lake City
6. Vancouver
7. Mexico City

I particularly like the picture of Nashville's skyline that headlines the article.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10074381-ranking-the-7-most-likely-destinations-for-mlbs-next-city-after-as-to-vegas-move

I agree that they have to find a way to get that city view if they want to be successful or even get a team to start with.  I understand they would get a good deal on the land behind TSU, but that land locked locaton with the undeveloped river area as a back drop is simply going to fail if it ever gets started.  I can't be convienced that area will get them a team and if somehow by grace they did, it will fail.   81 games is a lot to get people on  mass scale to that part of town which is so far from your Metro population base.  Davidson County has 708, 000 with the majority south of I-40 and then you have 622,000 in just Rutherford and Williamson counties.    I may be wrong, but I just can't wrap my head around not haveing it on the river downtown or between there and I-840.  

[samsonh]

1 hour ago, Jarno6006 said:

I agree that they have to find a way to get that city view if they want to be successful or even get a team to start with.  I understand they would get a good deal on the land behind TSU, but that land locked locaton with the undeveloped river area as a back drop is simply going to fail if it ever gets started.  I can't be convienced that area will get them a team and if somehow by grace they did, it will fail.   81 games is a lot to get people on  mass scale to that part of town which is so far from your Metro population base.  Davidson County has 708, 000 with the majority south of I-40 and then you have 622,000 in just Rutherford and Williamson counties.    I may be wrong, but I just can't wrap my head around not haveing it on the river downtown or between there and I-840.  

Not to mention there will be zero appetite for a publicly funded stadium.

[Argo]

1 hour ago, Jarno6006 said:

I agree that they have to find a way to get that city view if they want to be successful or even get a team to start with.  I understand they would get a good deal on the land behind TSU, but that land locked locaton with the undeveloped river area as a back drop is simply going to fail if it ever gets started.  I can't be convienced that area will get them a team and if somehow by grace they did, it will fail.   81 games is a lot to get people on  mass scale to that part of town which is so far from your Metro population base.  Davidson County has 708, 000 with the majority south of I-40 and then you have 622,000 in just Rutherford and Williamson counties.    I may be wrong, but I just can't wrap my head around not haveing it on the river downtown or between there and I-840.  

Absolutely.

[bnacincy]

East Bank between Jefferson Street Bridge and the train trestle facing either Downtown looking SE or due east and facing the new development at the former truck stop site.

Unbeatable location.

[smeagolsfree]

17 hours ago, Sean blackdog said:

https://theathletic.com/4622504/2023/06/20/mlb-player-poll-expansion-nashville/

Here is the coverage from The Post:

Poll of MLB players: Nashville should get expansion team | Baseball | nashvillepost.com

15 hours ago, Jarno6006 said:

I agree that they have to find a way to get that city view if they want to be successful or even get a team to start with.  I understand they would get a good deal on the land behind TSU, but that land locked locaton with the undeveloped river area as a back drop is simply going to fail if it ever gets started.  I can't be convienced that area will get them a team and if somehow by grace they did, it will fail.   81 games is a lot to get people on  mass scale to that part of town which is so far from your Metro population base.  Davidson County has 708, 000 with the majority south of I-40 and then you have 622,000 in just Rutherford and Williamson counties.    I may be wrong, but I just can't wrap my head around not haveing it on the river downtown or between there and I-840.  

The problem is going to be infrastructure cost related to any stadium. Metro is not going to fund anything right now and the new ownership of said stadium will have to pick up the cost of everything as I think the taxpayers are fed up right now. Maybe the state will fund the MLB stadium, but anything at the TSU site will be off the tables as there will be tons of infrastructure cost involved and the new mayor ever who that is will be involved in this.

Good luck finding the money to make this happen to whomever decides to bring a team here.

[Jarno6006]

1 hour ago, smeagolsfree said:

Here is the coverage from The Post:

Poll of MLB players: Nashville should get expansion team | Baseball | nashvillepost.com

The problem is going to be infrastructure cost related to any stadium. Metro is not going to fund anything right now and the new ownership of said stadium will have to pick up the cost of everything as I think the taxpayers are fed up right now. Maybe the state will fund the MLB stadium, but anything at the TSU site will be off the tables as there will be tons of infrastructure cost involved and the new mayor ever who that is will be involved in this.

Good luck finding the money to make this happen to whomever decides to bring a team here.

I think you are right about funding being a tough sell  for the next 5 years.  They should target 10 years when the new dome is completed and has a  track record of capacity crowds at a wide variety of premier events which would mean it's covering its debt.  You'll also have another 50,000 plus in the Davidson county tax base and totally redifined skyline as a backdrop from multiple locations.  Plus there will be another 100,000 plus in Rutherford/Williamson County  area (which combined will probably be bigger than Davidson County) if you need to look at the I-840 corridor.  The next 5 years may be too soon as mentioned, but in 10 years, another group will be buliding a stadium if this group can't get it done.   

[nashvylle]

Put the stadium here to try and replicate Pittsburgh's location. 

 

 

 

 

[WebberThomas4]

23 minutes ago, nashvylle said:

Put the stadium here to try and replicate Pittsburgh's location. 

 

 

 

 

I still think a new ownership group could work with the Sounds and the city to reconfigure the current sounds stadium. The new A’s stadium will only have 30k seats. The new ownership group could probably spend $300-400 million to get close to that number at First Horizon. Likely way less than building on the TSU property. 

[markhollin]

Another option for an ownership group with deep pockets could be the Colonial Pipeline/Tank storage on the north side of Main St. that hugs the river to the west.  This site also includes Volunteer Rebar.  The stadium could be situated with the view from home plate looking southward, which would allow a panorama of CBD/Riverfront to the SW over the right field wall, elements of the new East Bank development to the south over the  center field wall, and a bit of Station East and Titans Stadium to the SE over the left field wall.  There would be some additional acreage around the edges for a bit of Baseball Village.  

But most of the Baseball Village could be built to the north of the ballpark where Alley-Cassety Brick is currently located along the Cumberland.  They could even incorporate the late 1800s Alley Cassetty brick structure into the design of a Ballpark Village as a restaurant/store.  

All of this area could have a Riverwalk that would tie-in with the riverfront parks/greenways that the city has to the south, and that Oracle will be building to the north in River North. 

I know some will contend that moving the Colonial Pipeline stuff would be expensive and a logistical nightmare.  All I know is that Pittsburgh managed to move a much larger amount of storage tanks, pipelines, millworks, and active railway lines from their Golden Triangle back in the 1950s.  If they could do it, there's no reason we can't do the same (and this goes for the Colonial Pipeline/CITGO Petroleum tanks south of KVB Bridge in the PSC area as well). 

I've highlighted the ballpark and baseball village area under consideration in white below:
 

[Nathan_in_DC]

3 hours ago, smeagolsfree said:

Here is the coverage from The Post:

Poll of MLB players: Nashville should get expansion team | Baseball | nashvillepost.com

The problem is going to be infrastructure cost related to any stadium. Metro is not going to fund anything right now and the new ownership of said stadium will have to pick up the cost of everything as I think the taxpayers are fed up right now. Maybe the state will fund the MLB stadium, but anything at the TSU site will be off the tables as there will be tons of infrastructure cost involved and the new mayor ever who that is will be involved in this.

Good luck finding the money to make this happen to whomever decides to bring a team here.

Don't give anyone in the capitol building the idea of the state funding of the stadium! I can't see anything good for Nashville coming out of that...I imagine that it would almost certainly would result in something like The Battery (the development where the Braves play outside Atlanta) in Cool Springs, Mt. Juliet, or Pegram. 

[jmtunafish]

5 minutes ago, Nathan_in_DC said:

Don't give anyone in the capitol building the idea of the state funding of the stadium! I can't see anything good for Nashville coming out of that...I imagine that it would almost certainly would result in something like The Battery (the development where the Braves play outside Atlanta) in Cool Springs, Mt. Juliet, or Pegram. 

When I lived in Atlanta I went to Braves games all the time back when it was at Fulton County Stadium and then Turner Field.  Great times.  I was there when they went from Worst to First.  The problem in Atlanta is that downtown is not the center of the metro area, and frankly the area around Turner Field was pretty sketchy.  It was a downtown stadium but surrounded by huge parking lots.  In fact, the site of the old Fulton County Stadium is still just a parking lot, 26 years after it was torn down  The Battery is much closer to where most of the metro lives, certainly those with money, and, let's be honest, there's probably as much office space in the Cumberland area of Atlanta as there is in downtown Nashville.  The Braves stadium is still in a densely developed area and is not surrounded by a sea of parking lots.

Anyway, if the state gets involved, I agree with you that I hope they'll understand that the stadium really needs to be as close to downtown Nashville as possible.   For one thing, downtown Nashville is still pretty much the geographic center of the metro area.  Plus, I think a big lure for the MLB to Nashville is that Nashville has millions of tourists.  Just as mobs of visiting NHL fans stay an extra day or two and enjoy downtown whenever they come for a Predators game (esp Blackhawks fans, it seems), a MLB stadium downtown would attract tourists that other MLB teams don't.  A suburban stadium in Mt Juliet or Cool Springs would be awful.

[jkc2j]

As someone who currently lives in the Atlanta area(right across from The Battery to be exact) I see no issue with potentially building the stadium on TSU’s campus. This would potentially incentivize the city and developers to invest in the necessary infrastructure to allow more connectivity between North Nashville and other parts of the city, mainly Downtown and East Nashville via Jefferson St, Rosa Parks and Buchanan St. 

The Battery is a good example to look to for creating a vibrant mixed use area in a side of town that has historically been neglected by the rest of the city due to a variety of reasons, also The Battery is actually further from Downtown/Midtown Atlanta than TSU’s campus is from Downtown Nashville. However, the main issue with The Battery is it’s located in Cobb County where there’s zero mass transit other than buses and the only access points are from I-75/285 via Cobb Pkwy. This leads to traffic jams every game day. There’s also insufficient parking for the area as there’s patrons for the stadium as well as the entertainment district around the stadium which leads people to park at other nearby business to walk. 
 
I believe if connected with transit, a stadium at TSU could work very well connected the site to other parts of the core of Nashville.

Edited June 21, 2023 by jkc2j

[Bark At The Sun]

3 hours ago, jmtunafish said:

When I lived in Atlanta I went to Braves games all the time back when it was at Fulton County Stadium and then Turner Field.  Great times.  I was there when they went from Worst to First.  The problem in Atlanta is that downtown is not the center of the metro area, and frankly the area around Turner Field was pretty sketchy.  It was a downtown stadium but surrounded by huge parking lots.  In fact, the site of the old Fulton County Stadium is still just a parking lot, 26 years after it was torn down  The Battery is much closer to where most of the metro lives, certainly those with money, and, let's be honest, there's probably as much office space in the Cumberland area of Atlanta as there is in downtown Nashville.  The Braves stadium is still in a densely developed area and is not surrounded by a sea of parking lots.

Anyway, if the state gets involved, I agree with you that I hope they'll understand that the stadium really needs to be as close to downtown Nashville as possible.   For one thing, downtown Nashville is still pretty much the geographic center of the metro area.  Plus, I think a big lure for the MLB to Nashville is that Nashville has millions of tourists.  Just as mobs of visiting NHL fans stay an extra day or two and enjoy downtown whenever they come for a Predators game (esp Blackhawks fans, it seems), a MLB stadium downtown would attract tourists that other MLB teams don't.  A suburban stadium in Mt Juliet or Cool Springs would be awful.

The Little League team i used to play on had car washes and sold candy bars to raise money to pay for a bus from Blount County to go to Braves games at Fulton County Stadium in early late 70s..early 80's.    Wasnt a problem getting a good seat or a bunch of autographs from players back then....and it was awesome.   Only got to go to Turner Field once, and it was during the last year there.....and was depressing.  Freddie Gonzalez got fired the day before the game we went to and there might have been 5000 people there.   Went to Truist a couple of times.........is a nice stadium, but it feels like you dropped a stadium in The Gulch and moved it away from downtown Nashville by about 20 miles.  I agree with you that they would need alot of tourists or people walking/scootering from downtown to make it work here.    

[Winter Panda]

TSU released an update to their Master Plan on June 15 https://www.tnstate.edu/board/2023.06.15 Final Board Materials.pdf (relevant portion begins on page 120 of the PDF). In it they mentioned developing their Cumberland River property and building a professional baseball stadium among other things. Separately they mentioned building a hockey arena. In this interview from May of 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6oFvgjP4Ag Dave Stewart of Music City Baseball mentioned that the plan is to first build the event venue space and have mixed use around that before adding the baseball portion to the stadium later. The old renderings that Music City Baseball released some years ago featured a concert venue in the same building as the baseball stadium. I wonder if something like this could be done, https://manica.global/page/vtb-arena-park---dynamo-central-stadium where the event space could also be the hockey arena for TSU and the soccer portion would be for baseball. This could provide the stadium with some State funding that would likely be tolerable to the average citizen as it could be pitched as being for TSU's proposed men's and women's hockey teams. However, in that same interview, Dave Stewart mentioned that the hope for the concert venue is that it have a 25,000-seat capacity and be expandable up to 50,000. That’s obviously massive for a typical concert venue, let alone a college hockey arena.