Nashville Bits and Pieces

[Titans10]

4 minutes ago, nashwatcher said:

http://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2016/04/13/tire-city-hankook-bring-hundreds-jobs-nashville/82978972/

Hankook Tire. Hundreds of jobs and a $500 million dollar investment in Nashville? What could cost 500 mil????

A BIG tower!

[nashwatcher]

Lol, well someone's a little off. If it's 500 mil, wow. If it's 5 mil, yawn.

[titanhog]

Also says they're going to make the move by the end of the year...so they will at least have to use space already built at that time.  Of course, that could just be temporary.

[Titans10]

Maybe we can dream and they will try to outbuild Bridgestone!

[smeagolsfree]

Not sure where the 500 million came from, but they say they need 40,000 sq ft in downtown Nashville by the end of the year.....1201 Demonbreun, now at 70 % still has some space left.

 

That is where I think I would put my money if they want class A space, otherwise maybe the UBS tower has 40,000 left as Class B.

[MLBrumby]

Journos and numbers...notoriously inept with figures. 

[GreenHillsBoy]

Pretty sure the $500 million includes the manufacturing plant in Clarksville too.

[nashwatcher]

Tennessean is reporting 5 million now. They must have messed up the numbers in the original article.

[PillowTalk4]

20 hours ago, markhollin said:

346,900 total attendance at 16 events (7 Preds games, 4 concerts, and 5 days of SEC basketball tournament) at Bridgestone Arena in March.  That's a LOT of folks coming into CDB/SoBro in just one month's worth of activities at that coliseum alone. Lots of bid-ness for bars, restaurants, parking facilities, cabs, Uber/Lyft, etc. around those happenings. Can only imagine the tax revenue generated.  We truly are becoming one of the Top 5 entertainment destinations in America at this point.  

The numbers for Bridgestone Arena are just dumbfounding to me.  When a friend of mine in the Washington, D.C. area read about the arena being among the top venues in the world in terms of attendance he was just blown away.  Especially when you consider the number of cities that have venues that host both basketball and hockey along with concerts.  Man, just imagine what the attendance number would be if Nashville had an NBA franchise.  With Nashville's growth, I'm starting to think that the city could support another professional sport.  Memphis might not like Nashville getting an NBA franchise simply because it would give Nashville the trifecta in pro sports, but it would be a great in-state rivalry and I can see it being a rivalry with Atlanta and New Orleans as well.

I also wonder what Nashville will do with Nissan Stadium as it reaches the premature obsolete status that so many stadiums seem to be falling into so quickly these days as newer facilities with far greater amenities are being built.  The Titans certainly aren't in a position to ask for anything new in Nashville, but I can't help but think that Nashville would be a strong contender if not an automatic recipient for hosting the Superbowl and hosting the NCAA Final Four if it had a stadium with a retractable roof.  I would love to see if there's a way to enclose Nissan Stadium in a similar fashion to that which is being done to Arthur Ashe Stadium at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center located in Flushing Meadows, NY outside of NYC.  Increasing the number of end zone seats, enclosing the north and south ends of the stadium, bringing the finished facade up to the top of stadium on the east and west sides and adding a retractable roof would be needed.  Surely that would be cheaper than building a brand new stadium. Just think of the number of people that a Superbowl and a Final Four would bring to Nashville.  I think Nashville would find itself in a regular rotation among those cities that are the go to cities for these events.

[nashvylle]

I think the same thing with respect to Nissan Stadium and Arthur Ashe. 

[volsfanwill]

we will get an MLB team before an NBA team.  the Rays or the A's. and that is a decade out at the minimum. as far as the titans, I hope when the time comes we build in the  style of Lucas Oil Stadium not thew uglyness that Atlanta is building.

[Rockatansky]

I'm of the opinion that Nashville isn't large enough to support a third major sports franchise. This is especially true for Baseball, because of the large number of seats that need filling for 80+ games, and Basketball, because of the franchise in Memphis.

Other than the legacy cities of Pittsburgh and Cleveland all Metros with 3 teams are much, much larger than Nashville.

[PruneTracy]

I think MLS would be doable, but there is a lot of competition for those franchises right now. There are four clubs in Tennessee that play in the fourth-tier NPSL right now, I think the market warrants at least a look at a higher league.

Overall I'm comfortable with the level of sports we have now, particularly when you look at the state as a whole. NFL, NHL, NBA all have a strong presence in Tennessee. No, we don't have any clubs in the show, but we have two AAA teams and three AA, as well as a rookie league that covers the Tri-Cities area.

I will say there is one giant, gaping hole in the Nashville sports scene, that really should be a no-brainer for this market, regional saturation or not. The hole is located in Gladeville and it's 1 1/3 miles around.

[smeagolsfree]

Soccer is a whole different animal. We have a huge immigrant community from both Mexico and Kurdistan that follow the sport closely. Not to mention there were 30,000 at the Women's game last month. If we get any of the remaining sports, that is where I would put my money.

[NissanvilleTitans]

On 4/15/2016 at 2:31 PM, Rockatansky said:

I'm of the opinion that Nashville isn't large enough to support a third major sports franchise. This is especially true for Baseball, because of the large number of seats that need filling for 80+ games, and Basketball, because of the franchise in Memphis.

Other than the legacy cities of Pittsburgh and Cleveland all Metros with 3 teams are much, much larger than Nashville.

Milwaukee is smaller. 

[UTgrad09]

51 minutes ago, NissanvilleTitans said:

Milwaukee is smaller. 

Milwaukee is a 2 sport market. Cincinnati and Kansas City are also smaller media markets with baseball....and also 2 sport markets. Milwaukee and Kansas City have also had their teams for 45+ years. If those markets didn't have baseball for all those years, I doubt they would be on MLB's radar right now (for relocation/expansion).

[markhollin]

Part of the challenge of Major League Soccer is that the league requires a fairly steep expansion fee and a custom-built stadium (complete with luxury suites, premium seating, etc.). The ticket prices might also have a bit of sticker shock.  For instance, Columbus--a peer city to Nashville--has lowest price of $24 moving on up to $60. There are 17 home games in the season, which runs from early March to late October, then playoffs after that.  Stadium capacities around the league are in the 20-30,000 range. Only a few teams play in stadia from other leagues (New England at Gillette Stadium, New York at Yankee Stadium, Seattle at Century Link Field, and Atlanta at the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium).  In those cases, they only utilize the lower bowl and luxury suite levels for soccer.  If Nashville were to have a team, it's ownership group would need to have a tremendous relationship with the Adams family, since they control all endeavors at Nissan Stadium.  The Adams' have never shown much proclivity for wanting to share much of the pie.  Additionally, it could cause issues with the field, etc. since the two seasons overlap in the late summer/fall, and MLS plays the majority of their games on weekends.  

All that being said, an MLS expansion franchise here would most likely need its own stadium.  Whether it would be a public/private combo financing venture would be open to debate.  I'm not sure this market has the will to help finance another major public work like this when issues like mass transit are much more pronounced in everyone's realm. If the Adams can be convinced, then I think the option is doable.  

[Neigeville2]

This nails it.  I hope we can avoid getting entangled in any more major league sports.

[PruneTracy]

58 minutes ago, markhollin said:

All that being said, an MLS expansion franchise here would most likely need its own stadium.  Whether it would be a public/private combo financing venture would be open to debate.  I'm not sure this market has the will to help finance another major public work like this when issues like mass transit are much more pronounced in everyone's realm. If the Adams can be convinced, then I think the option is doable.  

It really annoys me that MLS insists on soccer-specific stadiums. Admittedly, some of the venues in the infancy of the league were not well-suited for soccer (or even any sport, in the case of cookie-cutters like RFK), but many newer football stadiums are built to accommodate both sports, not just from the perspective of field dimensions but also upper versus lower bowl capacity (CenturyLink Field is a good example of a stadium that tarps off well and keeps the environment, not that the Sounders need to do that).

If you built a replica of the Car Hole at another location and just left out the upper deck seats, you'd have a facility the MLS dreams about: ~30,000 capacity, plenty of suites and club seats just above the lower bowl. For some reason if you just cover the upper deck the existing facility isn't good enough: it's not "intimate", or there are football lines on the field for two months out of the season, or whatever.

It's nuts that MLS expects cities to spend money on two stadiums that are functionally identical except for capacity, even when the facility can be designed to accommodate two sports and schedules can be tweaked to avoid conflicts and allow the turf to heal. (Even then many college programs are using new SSS anyway, like in Houston.) But for now there are plenty of cities who are jumping at the chance to give them what they want, so I suppose it'll last as long as others let it.

[UTgrad09]

I was bored, so I decided to run some numbers on the hotel boom, and specifically how it relates to the Music City Center.

Using Google Maps, I identified all hotels within 1/4 mile and 1/2 mile (I measured from the corner of each block of the MCC, not the center). All hotels are in the downtown loop (I could have given a little leeway and included the Comfort Inn on Demonbreun, but ultimately decided against it). I separated the hotels into 3 categories: built, under construction, and proposed. I counted the JW Marriott as proposed, because even though there is demo, there is no crane. I did, however, include some of the rehab/reno boutique hotels as U/C if there is reported to be work going on. 1/2 mile results include 1/4 mile results. I did not include rumors or vague projects -- just proposals with actual numbers.

Anyways, here are the results:

1/4 mile built - 2,824

1/4 mile U/C - 868

1/4 mile proposed - 2,455

1/4 mile total - 6,147

1/2 mile built - 4,386

1/2 mile U/C - 1,454

1/2 mile proposed - 3,126

1/2 mile total - 8,966

[rookzie]

36 minutes ago, UTgrad09 said:

I was bored, so I decided to run some numbers on the hotel boom, and specifically how it relates to the Music City Center.

Using Google Maps, I identified all hotels within 1/4 mile and 1/2 mile (I measured from the corner of each block of the MCC, not the center). All hotels are in the downtown loop (I could have given a little leeway and included the Comfort Inn on Demonbreun, but ultimately decided against it). I separated the hotels into 3 categories: built, under construction, and proposed. I counted the JW Marriott as proposed, because even though there is demo, there is no crane. I did, however, include some of the rehab/reno boutique hotels as U/C if there is reported to be work going on. 1/2 mile results include 1/4 mile results. I did not include rumors or vague projects -- just proposals with actual numbers.

Anyways, here are the results:

1/4 mile built - 2,824

1/4 mile U/C - 868

1/4 mile proposed - 2,455

1/4 mile total - 6,147

1/2 mile built - 4,386

1/2 mile U/C - 1,454

1/2 mile proposed - 3,126

1/2 mile total - 8,966

..Stupid question (but then consider me as the only one asking).  So do these values or magnitudes refer to occupancy capacity?  I assume so by context, but just wanted to be certain.

Edited April 18, 2016 by rookzie

[UTgrad09]

7 minutes ago, rookzie said:

..Stupid question (but then consider me as the only one asking).  So do these values or magnitudes refer to occupancy capacity?  I assume so by context, but just wanted to be certain.

Total room counts. So conceivably the capacity could be 1.5-1.8x that (I'm not sure what the average breakdown is, or if it is even measured).

[titanhog]

Wonder if the Westin coming on line will lower the downtown rates at all?  I'm betting it will take more rooms to put a dent in the demand.

[MidTenn1]

I met a couple from Knoxville a few weeks ago who could not get a room in or near downtown on a Thursday night. I don't know where they stayed. I had the same problem looking for a room in Austin, TX a week ago. Had to stay in San Antonio.

[Pyramid Scheme]

I'm thinking we'll have to wait until all the hotels planned for the south side of KVB to be open before rates get back to normal. Demand outweighs supply by a long way at the moment.